There was another Sunday, when an
officer of the ship read the Service. It was
quiet and impressive, until we fell upon the
dangerous and perfectly unnecessary experiment
of striking up a hymn. After it
was given out, we all rose, but everybody
left it to somebody else to begin. Silence
resulting, the officer (no singer himself)
rather reproachfully gave us the first line
again, upon which a rosy pippin of an old
gentleman, remarkable throughout the passage
for his cheerful politeness, gave a little
stamp with his boot (as if he were leading
off a country dance), and blithely warbled
us into a show of joining. At the end
of the first verse we became, through
these tactics, so much refreshed and encouraged,
that none of us, howsoever unmelodious,
would submit to be left out of the
second verse; while as to the third we
lifted up our voices in a sacred howl that
left it doubtful whether we were the more
boastful of the sentiments we united in
professing, or of professing them with a
most discordant defiance of time, and tune.

"Lord bless us," thought I, when the
fresh remembrance of these things made me
laugh heartily, alone in the dead water-
gurgling waste of the night, what time I was
wedged into my berth by a wooden bar, or
I must have rolled out of it, " what errand
was I then upon, and to what Abyssinian
point had public events then marched?
No matter as to me. And as to them, if
the wonderful popular rage for a plaything
(utterly confounding in its inscrutable unreason)
had not then lighted on a poor
young savage boy, and a poor old screw of
a horse, and hauled the first off by the hair
of his princely head to ' inspect' British
volunteers, and hauled the second off by
the hair of his equine tail to the Crystal
Palace, why so much the better for all of
us outside Bedlam!"

So, sticking to the ship, I was at the
trouble of asking myself would I like to
show the grog distribution in "the fiddle"
at noon, to the Grand United Amalgamated
Total Abstinence Society. Yes, I
think I should. I think it would do them
good to smell the rum, under the circumstances.
Over the grog, mixed in a bucket,
presides the boatswain's mate, small tin
can in hand. Enter the crew, the guilty
consumers, the grown up Brood of Giant
Despair, in contradistinction to the Band of
youthful angel Hope. Some in boots, some
in leggings, some in tarpaulin overalls,
some in frocks, some in pea-coats, a very
few in jackets, most with sou' wester hats,
all with something rough and rugged
round the throat; all, dripping salt water
where they stand; all pelted by weather,
besmeared with grease, and blackened by
the sooty rigging. Each man's knife in its
sheath in his girdle, loosened for dinner.
As the first man, with a knowingly kindled
eye, watches the filling of the poisoned
chalice (truly but a very small tin mug, to
be prosaic), and tossing back his head, tosses
the contents into himself, and passes the
empty chalice and passes on, so the second
man with an anticipatory wipe of his
mouth on sleeve or neck-kerchief, bides his
turn, and drinks and hands, and passes on.
In whom, and in each as his turn approaches,
beams a knowingly-kindled eye, a brighter
temper and a suddenly awakened tendency
to be jocose with some shipmate. Nor do
I even observe that the man in charge of
the ship's lamps, who in right of his office
has a double allowance of poisoned chalices,
seems thereby vastly degraded, even though
he empties the chalices into himself, one
after the other, much as if he were delivering
their contents at some absorbent establishment
in which he had no personal
interest. But vastly comforted I note them
all to be, on deck presently, even to the
circulation of a redder blood in their cold
blue knuckles; and when I look up at
them lying out on the yards and holding
on for life among the beating sails, I cannot
for my life see the justice of visiting on
them—or on me—the drunken crimes of
any number of criminals arraigned at the
heaviest of Assizes.

Abetting myself in my idle humour, I
closed my eyes and recalled life on board
of one of those mail packets, as I lay, part
of that day, in the bay, of New York! O!
The regular life began—mine always did,
for I never got to sleep afterwards—with
the rigging of the pump while it was yet
dark, and washing down of the decks. Any
enormous giant at a prodigious hydropathic
establishment, conscientiously undergoing
the Water Cure in all its departments, and
extremely particular about cleaning his
teeth, would make those noises. Swash,
splash, scrub, rub, toothbrush, bubble,
swash, splash, bubble, toothbrush, splash,
splash, bubble, rub. Then the day would
break, and descending from my berth by a
graceful ladder composed of half-opened
drawers beneath it, I would reopen my
outer deadlight and my inner sliding window
(closed by a watchman during the
Water Cure), and would look out at the
long-rolling lead- coloured white- topped