"Drevis, Drevis!" he shouted, "they want a mess-room boy on the _Queen
Eleanor_!"

It didn't take Drevis long to get aboard the _Queen Eleanor_, a British
tramp out of Glasgow, bound for Hamburg and Vladivostok. He accosted the
chief engineer, his blue eyes shining eagerly.

"Yes," says the chief, "I need a mess-room steward right away--we sail
at four o'clock."

"Try me!" pipes Drevis. (Bless us, the boy was barely thirteen!)

The chief roars with laughter.

"Too small!" he says.

Drevis insisted that he was just the boy for mess-room steward.

"Well," says the chief, "go home and put on a pair of long pants and
come back again. Then we'll see how you look!"

Tommy ran home rejoicing. His Uncle Hendrick was a small man, and Tommy
grabbed a pair of his trousers. Thus fortified, he hastened back to the
_Queen Eleanor_. The chief cackled, but he took him on at two pounds
five a month.

Tommy didn't last long as mess-room boy. He broke so many cups the
engineers had to drink out of dippers, and they degraded him to cabin
boy at a pound a month. Even as cabin boy he was no instant success. He
used to forget to empty the chief's slop-pail, and the water would