on he was in already. His face was many shades redder
than it was before,--and, indeed, it was so very red that it looked as
if it might shine in the dark. His hat fell off, as it seemed to me, in
consequence of his stiff red hair rising up on end, and he raised his
voice so loud that it sounded more like the howl of a wild beast than
anything I could compare it to. 'You lubber!' he shouted. 'You villain!'
he shrieked; 'you, you!'--and here it seemed as if he was choking with
hard words which he couldn't get rid of,--'you come here to play tricks
on me! You try to fool me! I'll teach you!'--and, seizing hold of the
first thing he could lay his hands on (I did not stop to see what it
was, but wheeled about greatly terrified), he let fly at me with such
violence that I am sure I must have been finished off for certain had I
not quickly dodged my head. When I returned to the forecastle, the
sailors had a great laugh at me, and they called me ever afterwards
'Jack Keelson.' The keelson, you must know, is a great mass of wood
down in the very bottom of the ship, running the whole length of it; but
how should I have learned that?

"At another time I was told to go and 'grease the saddle.' Not knowing
that this was a block of wood spiked to the mainmast to support the main
boom, and thinking this a trick too, I refused to go, and came again
near getting my head broken by the red-faced mate. I did not believe
there was anything like a 'saddle' in the ship.

"And thus the sailors continued to worry me. Once, when I was very weak
with sea-sickness and wanted to keep down a dinner which I had just
eaten, they insisted upon it, that, if I would only put into my mouth a
piece of fat pork, and _keep it there_, my dinner would stay in its
place. The sailors were right enough, for as soon as my dinner began to
start up, of course away went the fat pork out ahead of it.

"But by and by I came to my senses, and, upon discovering that the bad
usage I received was partly my own fault, I stopped lamenting over my
unhappy condition, and began to show more spirit. Would you believe it?
I had actually been in the vessel five days before I had curiosity
enough to inquire her name. They told me that it was called the
_Blackbird_; but what ever possessed anybody to give it such a
ridiculous name I never could imagine. If they had called it Black Duck,
or Black Diver, there would have been some sense in it, for the ship was
driving head foremost