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outh-east breeze tempering the effect of the sun, which, however, still shone down on us at noon with tropical force, its rays being as potent almost as at the Equator. But the sea had lost all that glassy brazen look it had in the calm latitudes, now dancing with life and as blue as the heavens above it; while as our gallant ship sailed on, running pretty large on the port tack with everything set that could draw--skysails being hoisted on top of the royals and staysails, and trysails on every mast, with the foretopmast staysail, jib and flying jib forward, and upper and lower stu'n'sails spread out to windward--she looked like some beautiful bird in full flight with outstretched wings, her motion through the water being so easy and graceful, while the sparkling spray was tossed up sometimes over the sprit-sail yard as she ever and anon dipped her bows, as if curtsying to Neptune. It seemed to me the most delightful thing in the world to be there, ship and sea and air and sky being all alike in harmony, expressing the poetry of progression! My work, too, although we had plenty to do, to "keep us out of mischief," as the captain said, was not too hard, especially at this period. In the morning, after an early coffee, when few thought of turning in again although it might be their watch below, the weather was so enjoyable, the order was given for "brooms and buckets aft," and the first duty of the day was attended to. This was to scrub decks, just as in a well-ordered household the servant cleans the door-step before anyone is astir; the decks of a ship giving as good a notion of what her commander is like, as the door-step of a house does of its mistress! For this job the men forward rigged the head pump and sluiced the forecastle and main-deck; while we apprentices had to wash down the poop, having a fine time over it dowsing one another with buckets of water, and chasing each other round the mizzen-mast and binnacle, or else dodging the expected deluge behind the skylight--sometimes awaking Captain Gillespie up, and making him come up the companion in a towering rage to ask "what the dickens" we were "kicking up all that row for?" Once, as he came up in this way, Tom Jerrold caught him full in the face with a bucket of water he was pitching at me; and wasn't there a shindy over it, that's all! "Old Jock" was unable to find out who did it, for of course none of us would tell on Tom, and the water in the ca
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