he
feeling as unworthy of a _man_, and tried to turn his thoughts by
watching the two quartermasters at the wheel, who were straining every
muscle to keep the ship's head to the mountain waves that burst over the
bow every moment with the shock of a battering-ram.

Breakfast came at last, but was not very satisfactory when it did. The
old saying of "salt-horse and hard-tack" exactly described the food; and
Frank, eating with one hand while clinging desperately to the long
narrow table with the other, had quite enough to do in keeping his knife
from running into his eye, and himself from going head over heels on the
floor. At every plunge below the water-line the mess-room, already dim
enough, became almost dark, while the faces of the men looked as green
and ghastly as a band of demons in a pantomime. And, to crown all, one
of Frank's neighbors suddenly sent a tremendous splash of grease right
over him, coolly remarking,

"Now, Greeny, you won't get hurt if you fall overboard--ile calms the
water, you know."

At which all the rest laughed, and Frank felt worse than a murderer.

Breakfast over, our hero was "told off" to go below with the firemen.
Down he went, through one narrow hole after another, past deck after
deck of iron grating--down, down, down--till at last, as he emerged from
a dark passageway, a very startling scene burst upon him.

Along either side of a long narrow passage (the iron walls of which
sloped inward overhead) gaped a row of huge furnace mouths, sending out
a quivering glare of intense heat, increased by the mounds of red-hot
coals that heaped the iron floor. Amid this chaos, several huge black
figures, stripped to the waist, and with wet cloths around their sooty
faces, were flinging coal into the furnaces, or stirring the fires with
long iron rakes--now standing out gaunt and grim in the red blaze, now
vanishing into the eddies of hissing steam tossed about by the stream of
cold air from the funnel-like "wind-sail" serving as a ventilator.

A shovel was thrust into Frank Austin's hand, and he was set to keep the
doorway clear of the coal that came tumbling into it from the bunkers
where the coal-heavers were at work. In this way he labored till noon,
and then, with blistered hands and aching back, crawled up the iron
ladder, worn out, grimy, and half dazed, to his dinner.

But _what_ a dinner for Christmas-day! No appetizing turkey and
plum-pudding, eaten in the midst of loving faces and