THE HORRORS OF "TRYING OUT." 129 



duties, seemed like demons dancing about an 

 incantation fire. But with this picture all the 

 romance departs. The smell of the burning 

 cracklings is too horribly nauseous for descrip- 

 tion. It is as though all the ill odors in the world 

 were gathered together and being shaken up. 

 Walking upon deck has become an impossibility. 

 The oil washes from one side to the other, as the 

 ship lazily rolls in the seaway, and the safest mode 

 of locomotion is sliding from place to place, on 

 the seat of your pantaloons. 



Moreover, everything is drenched with oil. 

 Shirts and trowsers are dripping with the loath- 

 some stuff. The pores of the skin seem to be filled 

 with it. Feet, hands and hair, all are full. The 

 biscuit you eat glistens with oil, and tastes as 

 though just out of the blubber room. The knife 

 with which you cut your meat leaves upon the 

 morsel, which nearly chokes you as you reluc- 

 tantly swallow it, plain traces of the abomin- 

 able blubber. Every few minutes it becomes 

 necessary to work at something on the lee side 

 of the vessel, and while there you are corn- 

 filled to breath in the fetid smoke of the scrap 

 fires, until you feel as though filth had struck into 

 your blood, and suffused every vein in your body. 

 From this smell and taste of blubber, raw, boiling 

 and burning, there is no relief or place of refuge. 

 Tho cabin, the forecastle, even the mastheads, all 

 are filled with it, and were it possible to get for a 



9 



