Two bells marks five o'clock, and the crowd about the galley door grows impatient. The cook has a difficulty with his fire, and is behind time.
"Come on, 'doctor'!" shouts Old Martin; "get a move on yer! Them tawps'l 'alyards is screechin' fer a pull, an' th' Mate's got 'is heagle heye on that 'ere fore-tack. 'E'll be a-floggin' th' clock afore ye knows it!"
The Mate hears this, as Martin intended he should, and scowls darkly at that ancient mariner. Martin will have his 'old iron' worked up for that before the watch is out. He's a hard case. Coffee is served out, and the crowd disperses. It is now broad daylight, and the sun is on the horizon. The east is a-fire with his radiance; purest gold there changing to saffron and rose overhead; and in the west, where fading stars show, copper-hued clouds are working down to the horizon in track of the night. Our dingy sails are cut out in seemly curves and glowing colours against the deep of the sky; red-gold where the light strikes, and deepest violet in the shadows. Blue smoke from the galley funnel is wafted aft by the draught from the sails, and gives a kindly scent to the air; there is no smell like that of wood fires in the pride of the morning. This is a time to be awake and alive; a morning to be at the wheel of a leaning ship.
Presently I am relieved for a few minutes that I may have my coffee. Being the last man, I get a bo'sun's share of the grounds. To my protests the cook gives scant heed.
"Ach, sure! Phwat are yez growlin' at? Sure, if ye'd been in my last ship, yez wouldn't have none at all! Devil the coffee would yez get till eight bells ov a marnin', an' tay at thatt, bedad!"
The 'doctor,' being Irish, is beyond argument, so I take my pannikin along to our quarters to sift the grounds as best I can. There is naught but dry ship's biscuit to put down with it, for it is well on in the week—Thursday, indeed—and only Hansen among us can make his week's rations last out beyond that; he was bred in the north. The half-deck is in its usual hopeless disorder—stuffy and close and dismal in the shuttered half-light. Four small ports give little air, and sea clothes hanging everywhere crowd up the space. The beams, blackened by tobacco smoke, are hacked and carved, covered by the initials and remarks of bygone apprentices. Only the after one is kept clear; there the Board of Trade inscription (slightly altered by some inspiring genius), reads, "Certified to suffocate eight seamen." A dismal hole on a bright morning! Happily, one has not far to go for a breath of keen air. Ten minutes is my time, and I am back at the wheel again.
The Mate is seated on the cabin skylight, smoking. This is his time to consider the trim of the sails. It is no matter that the evening before the gear was sweated up to the tautest of sailing trim; the wind is unchanged, but morning shows wrinkles in the clew of the royals or a sag in the foot of a topsail. Ropes give mysteriously, and this must all be righted before the Old Man comes on deck. So he smokes leisurely and considers the trim.
The day's work begins at half-past five. The Mate strikes three bells himself, exact, on the tick of the minute, and goes forward to turn the men to.
"Fore tack," as Martin said, is the first order. The Mate signs to me to luff her up, and when the sail shakes the tack is hove hard down. Then sheets and halyards are sweated up, ropes coiled, and a boy sent aloft to stop up the gear. At the main they have the usual morning wrestle with the weather topsail sheet—a clew that never did fit. Macallison's loft must have been at sixes and sevens the day they turned that sail out; a Monday after Glasgow Fair, belike. When the trim is right, wash deck begins. A bucket and spar is rigged, and the clear sparkling water is drawn from overside. This is the fine job of the morning watch in summer seas. The sound of cool sluicing water and the swish of scrubbing brooms is an invitation that no one can resist. There is something in it that calls for bare feet and trousers rolled above the knee. There is grace in the steady throwing of the water—the brimming bucket poised for the throw, left foot cocked a few inches above the deck, the balance, and the sweeping half-circle with the limpid water pouring strongly and evenly over the planking; then the recovery, and the quick half-turn to pass the empty bucket and receive a full—a figure for a stately dance!
Now it is six, and I strike four bells. Martin has the next trick, but I see no signs of my relief. The Mate will have him at some lowly 'work-up' job, cleaning pig-pens or something like that, for his hint about flogging the clock in the morning. The cranky old 'shellback' is always 'asking for it.'