equally
busy 'Sails'; or 'doing Peggy' for 'Slush' the cook, who much prefers
wet grub to dry, slumgullion coffee to any kind of tea, ready-made hard
bread to ship-baked soft, and any kind of stodge to the toothsome
delights of dandyfunk and crackerhash. And all this is extra to the
regular routine, with its lamp-lockers, binnacles, timekeeping,
incessant look-out, and trick at the wheel. Besides, every man has to
look after his own kit, which he has to buy with his own money, and his
quarters, for which he alone is responsible. {118} So there is never
much time to spare, with watch and watch about, all through the voyage;
especially when all the ills that badly fed flesh is heir to on board a
deepwaterman incapacitate some hands, while falls from aloft and
various accidents knock out others.

The skipper, boatswain, cook, steward, Chips, and Sails keep no
watches, and hence are called 'the idlers,' a most misleading term, for
they work a good deal harder than their counterparts ashore; though the
mates and seamen often work harder still. There are seven watches in a
day, reckoned from noon to noon: five of four hours each and two of two
hours each. These two, the dog watches, are from four to six and six
to eight each afternoon. The crew are divided into port and starboard
watches, each under a mate. In Bluenose vessels the port watch was
always called by the old name of larboard watch till only the other
day. The starboard and larboard got their names because the starboard
was the side on which the steering oar was hung before the rudder was
invented, and the larboard was the side where the lading or cargo came
in.

Bluenoses have no use for nippers, as Britishers call apprentices. But
if they had, {119} and the reader was a green one, he would just about
begin to know the ropes and find his sea legs by the time that our
_Victoria_ had run her southing down to within another day's sail of
the foul-weather zone in the roaring forties round the Horn, which
seamen call 'Old Stiff.' Sails are shifted again, and the best new
suit is bent; for the coming gales have a clear sweep from the
Antarctic to the stormiest coast of all America, and the enormous,
grey-backed Cape Horners are the biggest seas in the world.

The best helmsmen are on duty now. Not even every Bluenose can steer,
any more than every Englishman can box or every Frenchman fence. There
are a dozen different ways of mishandling a vessel under