When
this was through, we stripped to our drawers, and taking pieces of
soap and strips of canvas for towels, we turned-to and soaped, washed,
and scrubbed one another down, to get off, as we said, the California
dust; for the common wash in salt water, which is all Jack can get,
being on an allowance of fresh, had little efficacy, and was more
for taste than utility. The captain was below all the afternoon, and
we had something nearer to a Saturnalia than anything we had yet seen;
for the mate came into the scuppers, with a couple of boys to scrub
him, and got into a battle with them in heaving water. By unplugging
the holes, we let the soapsuds off the decks, and in a short time
had a new supply of rain water, in which we had a grand rinsing. It
was surprising to see how much soap and fresh water did for the
complexions of many of us; how much of what we supposed to be tan
and sea-blacking, we got rid of. The next day, the sun rising clear,
the ship was covered, fore and aft, with clothes of all sorts, hanging
out to dry.
As we approached the line, the wind became more easterly, and the
weather clearer, and in twenty days from San Diego,-
Saturday, May 28th, at about three P.
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