They
lived upon grease; eat it, drank it, slept in the midst of it, and
their clothes were covered with it. To a Russian, grease is the
greatest luxury. They looked with greedy eyes upon the tallow-bags
as they were taken into the vessel, and, no doubt, would have eaten
one up whole, had not the officer kept watch over it. The grease
seemed actually coming through their pores, and out in their hair, and
on their faces. It seems as if it were this saturation which makes
them stand cold and rain so well. If they were to go into a warm
climate, they would all die of the scurvy.
The vessel was no better than the crew. Everything was in the oldest
and most inconvenient fashion possible; running trusses on the
yards, and large hawser cables, coiled all over the decks, and
served and parcelled in all directions. The topmasts, top-gallant
masts and studding-sail booms were nearly black for want of
scraping, and the decks would have turned the stomach of a
man-of-war's-man. The galley was down in the forecastle; and there the
crew lived, in the midst of the steam and grease of the cooking, in
a place as hot as an oven, and as dirty as a piggy.
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