ual strain of attention due to the rapid motion of vessels under
steam. The very slowness of sailing-ships lightened anxiety. In such a
gale you might as well be anxious in a wheel-chair. And then, when you
went below, you went, not bored, but healthfully tired with active
exertion of mind and body. Yes; the sound was sweet then, at eight
bells, the pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe of the boatswain's mates, followed
by their gruff voices drawling out, in loud sing-song: "A-a-a-all the
starboard watch! Come! turn out there! Tumble out! Tumble out! Show a
leg! Show a leg! On deck there! all the starboard watch!" When I went
below that morning with the port watch, at four o'clock, I turned over
to my relief a forecastle on which he would have nothing to do but
drink his coffee at daylight.

That daylight coffee of the morning watch, chief of its charms, need
not be described to the many who have experienced the difference
between the old man and the new man of before and after coffee. The
galley (kitchen) fire of ships of war used to be started at seven
bells of the mid-watch (3.30 A.M.); and the officers, and most of the
men, who next came on duty, managed to have coffee, the latter
husbanding their rations to this end. Since those days a benevolent
regulation has allowed an extra ration of coffee to the crew for this
purpose, so that no man goes without, or works the morning watch on an
empty stomach. For the morning watch was very busy. Then, on several
days of the week, the seamen washed their clothes. Then the upper deck
was daily scrubbed; sometimes the mere washing off the soap-suds left
from the clothes, sometimes with brooms and sand, sometimes the solemn
ceremony of holy-stoning with its monotonous musical sound of
grinding. Along with these, dovetailed in as opportunity offered, in a
sailing-ship under way there went on the work of readjusting the yards
and sails; a pull here and a pull there, like a woman getting herself
into shape after sitting too long in one position. Yards trimmed to a
nicety; the two sheets of each sail close home alike; all the canvas
taut up, from the weather-tacks of the courses to the weather-earings
of the royals; no slack weather-braces, or weather-leaches, letting a
bight of loose canvas sag like an incipient double chin. When these
and a dozen other little details had remedied the disorders of the
night, due to the invariable slacking of cordage under strain, the
ship was fit for any eye to