My hands bothered me a great deal, unused as they were to work. The
nails were discoloured and black, while the skin was already grained with
dirt which even a scrubbing-brush could not remove. Then blisters came,
in a painful and never-ending procession, and I had a great burn on my
forearm, acquired by losing my balance in a roll of the ship and pitching
against the galley stove. Nor was my knee any better. The swelling had
not gone down, and the cap was still up on edge. Hobbling about on it
from morning till night was not helping it any. What I needed was rest,
if it were ever to get well.

Rest! I never before knew the meaning of the word. I had been resting
all my life and did not know it. But now, could I sit still for one
half-hour and do nothing, not even think, it would be the most
pleasurable thing in the world. But it is a revelation, on the other
hand. I shall be able to appreciate the lives of the working people
hereafter. I did not dream that work was so terrible a thing. From
half-past five in the morning till ten o'clock at night I am everybody's
slave, with not one moment to myself, except such as I can steal near the
end of the second dog-watch. Let me pause for a minute to look out over
the sea sparkling in the sun, or to gaze at a sailor going aloft to the
gaff-topsails, or running out the bowsprit, and I am sure to hear the
hateful voice, "'Ere, you, 'Ump, no sodgerin'. I've got my peepers on
yer."

There are signs of rampant bad temper in the steerage, and the gossip is
going around that Smoke and Henderson have had a fight. Henderson seems
the best of the hunters, a slow-going fellow, and hard to rouse; but
roused he must have been, for Smoke had a bruised and discoloured eye,
and looked particularly vicious when he came into the cabin for supper.

A cruel thing happened just before supper, indicative of the callousness
and brutishness of these men. There is one green hand in the crew,
Harrison by name, a clumsy-looking country boy, mastered, I imagine, by
the spirit of adventure, and making his first voyage. In the light
baffling airs the schooner had been tacking about a great deal, at which
times the sails pass from one side to the other and a man is sent aloft
to shift over the fore-gaff-topsail. In some way, when Harrison was
aloft, the sheet jammed in the block through which it runs at the end of
the gaff. As I understood it, there were two ways of getting it
clear