The Galatea was badly strained in a gale of wind, her deck seams opening so that the water streamed into the cabins beneath. One lieutenant used to say to another:
"How did you sleep last night? It was pretty rough.
"Woke at one o'clock and saw them reefing tops'ls"—meaning that, lying in bed, he could see clear through the seams.
I used my sail-making ability to make a canvas awning for my bed; fitted it with a ridge rope, laced it down and hauled it taut, led a trough from it to take the water into the slop-pail; and slept dry under it.
It was during the visit of the Galatea to Australia that I was made a Freemason; and I have always regretted that I have never been able to devote as much time to Masonry as I should have liked to give to the Craft. The Australian Lodge into which I was admitted was under the impression that I was the most timid neophyte who had ever joined it.
When the ceremony was ended, one of the members of the Lodge said to me:
"You are safely through it. But do you know that of all the men we have had through this lodge, we never had one so paralysed with fear as yourself. You were shivering like an aspen!"
The fact was that during the initiatory ceremonies something unaccountably struck me as extraordinarily funny. The effort to subdue my emotions caused me to tremble all over.
One of our diversions in the Galatea when she was at sea, was to listen to the conversations which used repeatedly to occur between a certain worthy member of the Duke's suite and the old quartermaster. The member of the staff in question had endeared himself to us by his high seriousness. He dealt with the most trifling incidents of life in a spirit of preternatural and wholly sincere solemnity. Supposing that you told him that a common friend had fallen off his horse and bruised his leg, our member of staff would instantly ship a countenance of intense concern.
"Bruised his leg? You don't say so! Good God! Has he indeed?"