WHALERS AND WHALING. 



length being the exact width of the apartment. One chair, and a 

 rusty stove completed the furniture. These two cabins were flanked 

 on either side by the sleeping quarters of the Captain and his Mates. 

 Dark, bad smelling cupboards with two wooden shelves one above the 

 other for bunks. They were in every way suitable accommodations 

 for the rats and roaches we were told to look out for. 



When I realized that these were the swell apartments, so to 

 speak, I began to wonder what sort of a place the sailors slept in, 

 and wondered still more a few minutes later when I was invited to 

 descend a ladder into a black hole in the bow of the ship, from which 

 arose an indescribable odor, that made one's stomach quail. 



"I wouldn't advise you to come down," said a sailor at the 

 bottom of the ladder, who had been packing his sea chest to go ashore, 

 and I took his advice, and stood peering down into the darkness with 

 my handkerchief to my nose, trying to imagine what it must be like, 



29 



