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The sailor was too grumpy and surly a man for a little boy like me to address a second time; so I made my way to the hatch, and put my leg over into it, concluding that I should find somebody to tell me where my bedroom was when I had descended. The ladder was perpendicular, and I was very slow in stepping down it.

“HE TURNED HIS EYES SLOWLY UPON ME.”

“Now then!” bawled a powerful voice: “up or down; one ways or t’other. There ain’t too much light here; and who’s bin and made you think you’re made o’ sheet glass?”

This remark, I found, was uttered by a seafaring man, one of the sailors of the ship, I afterwards came to know, who had been told off to help our handful of emigrants to secure their boxes. I think he was slightly in liquor; at all events, I grew sensible of a distinct taste of rum-and-water on the air as I jumped backwards on to the lower deck close beside him.

“Where is my bedroom?” said I.

“No bedrooms at sea, young ’un,” he answered. “What callin’s yourn? Are ’ee a sailor man? My precious eyes! there’s buttons! See here, my lively: when the shanks of them buttons is worn off, I’ll give ye the value of a fardenswuth of silver spoons for the whole boiling of ’em.”