Often furnished with a club-hammer, they swung me over the bows in a bowline, to pound the rust off the anchor: a most monotonous, and to me a most uncongenial and irksome business. There was a remarkable fatality attending the various hammers I carried over with me. Somehow they _would_ drop out of my hands into the sea. But the supply of reserved hammers seemed unlimited: also the blessings and benedictions I received from the chief mate for my clumsiness.
At other times, they set me to picking oakum, like a convict, which hempen business disagreeably obtruded thoughts of halters and the gallows; or whittling belaying-pins, like a Down-Easter.
However, I endeavored to bear it all like a young philosopher, and whiled away the tedious hours by gazing through a port-hole while my hands were plying, and repeating Lord Byron’s Address to the Ocean, which I had often spouted on the stage at the High School at home.
Yes, I got used to all these matters, and took most things coolly, in the spirit of Seneca and the stoics.
All but the _“turning out”_ or rising from your berth when the watch was called at night—_that_ I never fancied. It was a sort of acquaintance, which the more I cultivated, the more I shrunk from; a thankless, miserable business, truly.
Consider that after walking the deck for four full hours, you go below to sleep: and while thus innocently employed in reposing your wearied limbs, you are started up—it seems but the next instant after closing your lids—and hurried on deck again, into the same disagreeably dark and, perhaps, stormy night, from which you descended into the forecastle.
The previous interval of slumber was almost wholly lost to me; at least the golden opportunity could not be appreciated: for though it is usually deemed a comfortable thing to be asleep, yet at the time no one is conscious that he is so enjoying himself. Therefore I made a little private arrangement with the Lancashire lad, who was in the other watch, just to step below occasionally, and shake me, and whisper in my ear—_“Watch below, Buttons; watch below”—_which pleasantly reminded me of the delightful fact. Then I would turn over on my side, and take another nap; and in this manner I enjoyed several complete watches in my bunk to the other sailor’s one. I recommend the plan to all landsmen contemplating a voyage to sea.