70 SPORT, TRAVEL, AND ADVENTURE 



standing the sort of life into which I had been suddenly 

 launched. Then I looked aloft. The vast size of the 

 masts and yards accustomed as I was hitherto only 

 to the colliers in Boulogne harbour or French fishing- 

 boatsseemed to stagger me. A stiff breeze was 

 whistling through the rigging, the ship was lying broad- 

 side on to the wind in the strong current, and I was 

 conscious of a distinct rolling of the vessel, for there 

 was a heavy sea for Spithead and the white crests 

 of short, steep waves glittered in the light from the 

 main-deck ports. 



A dazed memory of my first night in a hammock 

 may be accounted for by the fact that I had not been 

 long in it having got there with much difficulty when 

 I found myself with my head under one of the arm- 

 racks, and my heels on the lid of a chest, some amusing 

 person having treated me to the ordinary joke played 

 on new-comers of cutting down my hammock. I felt 

 very foolish : with a lump on the back of my head, and 

 a marine sentry quietly chuckling as I lay on the deck, 

 so that I thought the whole thing anything but pleasant. 

 However, with the aid of the sentry my hammock was 

 soon in its place and I myself once more in it, where 

 sleep, which rarely deserts the young, soon caused me 

 to forget all my troubles. 



Fleets, in those days, were continually exercised in 

 making and shortening sail, shifting spars, and all 

 similar manoeuvres aloft, and as the greatest rivalry 

 existed amongst the crews as to which ship should 

 carry out some evolution first accidents were frequent ; 

 in fact, hardly a drill-day passed without two or three 

 men being seriously injured. And naturally the foreign 

 fleets endeavoured to compete with the British, in a 



