I have already mentioned, that the First watch begins, nominally, at eight, and ends at midnight; but people are much mistaken, who suppose that a sleepy-headed midshipman, with the prospect of a cold Middle watch before him, and just awakened out of a sound nap, is disposed to jump up at once, dress himself, and run upon deck. Alas! it is far from this; and no one who has not been exposed to the trial can conceive the low ebb to which patriotism, zeal, public spirit—call it what you please—sinks at such an hour, in the breast of the unhappy wretch who, in the midst of one of those light and airy dreams, which render the night season of young people such a heaven of repose, is suddenly roused up. After being awakened by a rude tug at the clews of his hammock, he is hailed, after the following fashion, by the gruff old quarter-master.
“Mr. Doughead!”
No answer. Another good tug at the hammock.
“Mr. Doughead! it’s twelve o’clock, sir!”
“Very well—very well; you need not shake me out of bed, need you? What sort of a night is it?”
“It rains a little, sir, and is just beginning to blow. It looks very black, sir.”
“Oh, plague take it! Then we shall have to take in a reef, I suppose?”
“It seems very like it, sir. It is beginning to snuffle.”
With this, Mr. Doughead gives himself a good shrug in his blanket, turns half round, to escape the glare of light from the quarter-master’s lantern, hung up within six inches of his face, expressly to keep him awake, and in ten seconds he is again tightly clasped in the arms of Morpheus, the presiding deity of the cock-pit at that hour. By and by comes down the quarter-master of the middle watch, who, unlike the young gentleman, has relieved the deck twenty minutes before.
“Mr. Doughead! it’s almost one bell, sir.”