" Other wondrous songs through the
night-watch could be heard in keeping with the happy time. Then what
they would do and what they wouldn't do in the next port was talked of,
when song and yarn ran out.
Hold fast, shipmate, hold fast and belay! or the crimps of Montevideo
will wear the new jacket you promise yourself, while you will be off
Cape Horn, singing "Haul out to leeward," with a wet stocking on your
neck, and with the same old "lamby" on, that long since was "lamby" only
in name, the woolly part having given way to a cloth worn much in "Far
Cathay"; in short, you will dress in dungaree, the same as now, while
the crimps and landsharks divide your scanty earnings, unless you "take
in the slack" of your feelings, and "make all fast and steady all."
Ten days out, and we were in the northeast "trades"--porpoises were
playing under the bows as only porpoises can play; dolphins were racing
alongside, and flying-fish were all about. This was, indeed, a happy
change, and like being transported to another world. Our hardships were
now all forgotten, for "the sea washes off all the woes of men.
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