, from their long
yarns and equally long disputes. No man can be a sailor, or know
what sailors are, unless he has lived the forecastle with them-
turned in and out with them, eaten of their dish and drank of
their cup. After I had been a week there, nothing would have tempted
me to go back to my old berth, and never afterwards, even in the worst
of weather, when in a close and leaking forecastle off Cape Horn,
did I for a moment wish myself in the steerage. Another thing which
you learn better in the forecastle than you can anywhere else, is to
make and mend clothes, and this is indispensable to sailors. A large
part of their watches below they spend at this work, and here I
learned that art which stood me in so good stead afterwards.
But to return to the state of the crew. Upon our coming into the
forecastle, there was some difficulty about the uniting of the
allowances of bread, by which we thought we were to lose a few pounds.
This set us into a ferment. The captain would not condescend to
explain, and we went aft in a body, with a Swede, the oldest and
best sailor of the crew, for spokesman.
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