greenhorn takes out a pair o' gloves, shoves his
fingers into 'em, and tails on to the rope behind. "Well, dammit!" says
the mate, "if I ever see the likes o' that! Jacobs, get a tarbucket and
dip his fists in it; larn him what his hands was made for! I never could
bear to see a fellow ashore with his flippers shoed like his feet; but
at sea, confound me, it would make a man green-sick over again!" If
you'd only seen how Master Collins looked when shoved his missy fingers
into the tar, and chucked the gloves o' board! The next moment he ups
fists and made slap at me, when in goes the brush in his mouth; the mate
gives him a kick astarn; the young chap went sprawling down into the
half-deck ladder, where the carpenter had his shavin'-glass rigged to
crop his chin--and there he gets another clip across the jaws from
Chips. "Now," says the mate, "the chap'll be liker a sailor to-morrow.
He's got some spunk in him, though, by the way he let drive at you, my
lad," says he: "that fellow 'll either catch the cat or spoil the
monkey. Look after him, Jacobs, my lad," says the third mate; "he's in
my watch, and the captain wants him to rough it out; so show him the
ropes, and let him taste an end now an' then. Ha! ha! ha!" says he
again, laughing, "'tis the first time I ever see a embreller loosed out
at sea, and but the second I've seen brought aboard even! He's the
greenest hand, sure enough, it's been my luck to come across! But green
they say's nigh to blue, so look out if I don't try to make a sailor of
the young spark!"

Well, for the next three or four days the poor fellow was knocked about
on all hands; he'd got to go aloft to the 'gallant cross-trees, and out
on the yard foot-ropes the next morning, before breakfast; and, coming
down, the men made him fast till he sent down the key of his
bottle-chest to pay his footing. If he closed his eyes a moment in the
watch, slash comes a bucket full o' Channel water over him; the third
mate would keep him two hours on end, larnin' to rig out a sternsail
boom, or grease a royal mast. He led a dog's life of it too, in the
half-deck: last come, in course, has al'ays to go and fill the bread
barge, scrub the planks, an' do all the dirty jobs. Them _owners'
'prentices_, sich as he had for messmates, is always worse to their own
kind by far nor the "_common sailors_," as the long-shore folks calls a
foremast-man. I couldn't help takin' pity on the poor lad, being the
only one as had s