, from their long yarns and equally long
disputes. No man can be a sailor, or know what sailors are, unless
he has lived in the forecastle with them,-- turned in and out with
them, and eaten from the common kid. After I had been a week
there, nothing would have tempted me to go back to my old berth,
and never afterwards, even in the worst of weather, when in a
close and leaking forecastle off Cape Horn, did I for a moment
wish myself in the steerage. Another thing which you learn better
in the forecastle than you can anywhere else is, to make and mend
clothes, and this is indispensable to sailors. A large part of
their watches below they spend at this work, and here I learned
the art myself, which stood me in so good stead afterwards.
But to return to the state of the crew. Upon our coming into the
forecastle, there was some difficulty about the uniting of the
allowances of bread, by which we thought we were to lose a few
pounds. This set us into a ferment. The captain would not
condescend to explain, and we went aft in a body, with John, the
Swede, the oldest and best sailor of the crew, for spokesman. The
recollection of the scene that followed always brings up a smile,
especially the quarter-deck dignity and elocution of the captain.
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