and a writing-table; and a swing lamp, a campcouch, a bundle of cleets, a tin foot-bath, a gun, and four cases of Havannahs. All these were dancing the hays about his cabin, and Peregrine Pultuney stood amongst them with folded arms and a contemplative countenance, somewhat as Hercules may be supposed to have looked upon first entering the Augean stables.

But Peregrine Pultuney did not long despair, for somehow or other it struck him, that as he had brought a servant with him—a great thing, by the way, for a cadet-there was no earthly reason why he should not put the services of the man in requisition; so he scrambled up a ladder, called the companion ladder, because only one person can go up it at a time, made his way forward, found Peer Khan, asked him if he understood the arrangement of cabin furniture, received a satisfactory reply in the affirmative; and went down again with his darkvisaged attendant, to see things put a little to rights.

And it is a remarkable fact, that what Peregrine Pultuney could not have accomplished in fifty years, with his folded arms and contemplative countenance, was performed by Peer Khan, in so many minutes, by the simple act of setting to work about it. With a cleet here, and a hook there, a nail in a bulk-head, and a screw in a beam, what wonders were speedily accomplished. There was the table lashed, and the boxes cleeted, and the cot slung,

and one thing put fore and aft, and another thwart ships, and a third turned out of the cabin, and all this by the simple agency of a hammer, a turnscrew, and a strong arm. Peregrine Pultuney stood by in silent admiration, whilst his cabin began to assume every moment a more habitable aspect, and at last he was actually enabled to bring himself to anchor on a couch, and to lay his head upon a pillow-two things which a few minutes before, Peregrine Pultuney never hoped to accomplish within the next few weeks at the earliest.

It was at this juncture that Peregrine Pultuney, regarding as he was the proceedings of his active attendant with considerable complacency, was startled by hearing a familiar voice almost close to his ear, uttering certain words that were not in the least more strange to him than the voice.

Peregrine started up, but there was no one saving Peer Khan in his cabin; so he looked around him to satisfy himself fully, and at last determined that the voice proceeded from the other side of the bulkhead.

"Well!-if this isn't a confounded hole, I never"-ejaculated the voice.

"Julian Jenks, as I live!" exclaimed Peregrine, and in less than a minute the two friends were shaking one another by the hand, with every symptom of personal gratification.

"Well," said Jenks, "what do you think of this-a confounded hole-isn't it ?"

"We must make the best of it," remarked Pere

grine Pultuney.

Ah?" returned Jenks, "that's always your way, you're for making the best of every thing. Now look there; did you ever see any thing like that?— three feet by two and a half. And only think of being condemned to live in such a confounded narrow hole for four or five months at the least! Swarms of cockroaches too, I'll answer for it-rats, musquitoes, and a smell of bilge-water. Just look too at the state of my cabin-can I ever get that to rights?" and Julian Jenks, by way of manifesting his distress, burst into a loud laugh.

It was a remarkable feature in the character of Julian Jenks, that although he was for ever anathematizing the place in which he chanced to be located, there was not in the multitudinous congregation of humanity, as philosophical novel writers express themselves, a more facile, a more sunny-minded, a more easily satisfied person than Julian Jenks. He had a keen perception of the ludicrous, and it was his delight to extract the honey of absurdity out of the gall of discomfort, a metaphor to which we are somewhat astonished at finding ourselves giving a place, as we have long ago abandoned poetry, figures of speech, and all that.

"Now," continued Julian Jenks, "do just tell me, what am I to do, Pultuney? Did you ever see such a hole? It's for all the world like a back

closet in a broker's shop, dark as pitch, and chock full of miscellanies; and the worst of it is, that if we put out to sea before my cabin's to rights, there's no chance of ever getting it done, for I'm sure to be sick as a dog. Only fancy, pitching about in the Bay of Biscay with all one's cabin furniture adrift!"

"You must make them fast," observed Peregrine, with a smile.

well

"Ah!" replied Julian Jenks, "it's all very to talk; but I really don't think it possible to reduce such a chaos to order. I did begin-I did indeed; and I screwed a brass hook into the beam to hang up my cabin-lamp by; it looked very tidy, I assure you, but in less than five minutes I rapped my head against it, shattered the glass to pieces, and very nearly knocked out my brains!"

"That was unfortunate," observed Peregrine Pultuney.

"I think it was, too," continued his companion. "No glass to one's lamp for the remainder of the voyage, and this too the first day. Well, I wish I had turned chimney-sweep before I had trusted myself in such a confounded hole," and certain visions of soot-bags and kitchen-chimneys flitted across the young soldier's mind.

"Well, I suppose I must help you," said Peregrine Pultuney, who was the most obliging creature in the world. "Just come into my cabin and see how comfortable I am."

"I'm blest if you haven't got a nigger to help you," exclaimed Julian Jenks, as he entered his friend's dog-kennel.

"None of that," returned Peregrine Pultuney, punching his friend in the ribs as he spoke; "you'll hurt his feelings if he hears you."

"That's good now," cried Julian Jenks; "you don't mean seriously to say now, do you, that that black fellow has any feelings to hurt?"

"As much as you or I have," returned Peregrine, gravely; and then, he continued, in his old good-humoured way, "I'll tell you what, Jenks, this servant of mine shall put your cabin to rights, and do any thing else you like, but if ever you call him a nigger again, from that moment he ceases to work for you. That's fair isn't it, my boy?" and as he uttered this interrogative, he gave his friend a hearty slap on the back.

Having performed this little manual feat, our hero directed Peer Khan to arrange Julian Jenks's traps, and then suggested to his friend that they might just as well go upon deck to reconnoitre.

As they passed along the steerage, Julian Jenks winked his eyes, nudged his companion, pointed to a cabin on the larboard side, and said in a low voice, "I say, Pultuney, there's the rummest cove you ever saw in that cabin.”

"Is there, indeed," remarked Peregrine.

"He's been blubbering like a child all the morning," continued Jenks. "I never saw a fellow in