68 SPORT, TRAVEL, AND ADVENTURE 



Then the two lads cross over from the other side 

 of the deck and are kind and friendly enough. I look 

 on them as quite old salts, for one has been on board 

 a whole month and the other a week, and both seem to 

 me perfectly at home with everything. 



* Come along down with us into the berth/ says one 

 of them : ' the midshipmen's berth/ he explains. 



' I say/ says the other, ' I don't think I'd keep that 

 glass in my eye if I were you. It looks so rummy.' 



I explain I cannot see where to put my feet without 

 it, which they think ' rummier ' still, and lead the way 

 below. 



With unaccustomed steps I get down to the main 

 deck ; rows of great guns before me, lanterns of horn, 

 slung from beams overhead, in which gutter tallow 

 candles giving a feeble, yellow light ; down still lower, 

 to a dark hole, stinking of pitch, bilge-water, cock- 

 roaches, mouldy biscuits, damp clothes, and tarpaulins, 

 where long lines of whitewashed sea-chests stand in 

 front of rows of muskets and cutlasses ; into a pokey 

 kind of den, measuring twelve feet long by five feet 

 wide, the entire centre occupied by a table on which 

 is spread a cloth which may once have been white. 

 I see going on what I suppose to be some kind of meal, 

 for there are cups and saucers of great thickness,, 

 bread, and bowls of slithery yellow butter, whilst, sit- 

 ting on the lockers, jammed close together round th< 

 table are my future messmates, some fourteen or fifteei 

 in number, of all shapes and sizes, including the 

 Assistant Surgeon, ranging from children my own ag( 

 to men of five-and-twenty. From the centre of 

 massive beam overhead swings an oil-lamp, smelling 

 horrible, whilst two tallow dips, stuck into bottles, hel] 



