In our mess I think there were four of as jolly, good-hearted tars as may be found in any navy, who vied with each other in their efforts to make my stay with them as comfortable as possible. I presume my popularity was increased a little bit, from the fact that I really couldn't swallow the gill of grog, nor use tobacco, that was issued to every one who wanted it, and my portion was scrupulously drawn and assigned to our mess.
I was here first introduced to sea biscuit, which you know is the naval term of S. O. B. Every old soldier will know the meaning of those cabalistic letters.
One fellow, who was so droll that he kept the mess in a roar all the time, insisted that some of the sea biscuit then being issued by the commissary had been left over from the Revolutionary War. They were really as hard as a board; it was often as good as a show to watch the antics of Jack trying to weld them, like iron, at the galley range, or to put them under the rollers of the big cannon for a chuck stone.
The pickled pork he declared was alive with worms, and insisted upon taking me up the main mast, to prove to me that great chunks of it were able to crawl up the polished mast to the fore-top. While eating our grub (as they call it), when the cook had prepared a particularly nice dish of scouce (I think that's the way it's spelled), Jack would pretend to be so hungry that he and another chum would get on all fours and squeal for all the world like a lot of hogs in a pen.
Every day there would be signals exchanged between our ship and the others, or with Fort Pickens, and occasionally boats from the other vessels would come to our side bringing officers to visit our officers.
For some days my daily life was spent in this way. I began to imagine, from some of the yarns that I was compelled to overhear from the sailors at night, that something was going wrong with me; nothing had been intimated to me directly by any of the officers, who were uniformly courteous, excepting, perhaps, Lieutenant Perry, the executive officer who had general charge of everything. On another occasion he had picked me up sharply for daring to handle a marine glass that I saw on the bridge one day and elevated toward the Rebels.