Frank Brown, Sea Apprentice

by Frank Thomas Bullen

The wind had changed, and the starboard, or second mate’s watch, had all their work to trim and shorten sail. But Frank slept through it, although when he was aroused at eight bells—four in the morning—he was wet through, and shivering with the cold. And hungry! But that was a good sign, showing that he had quite got over his sea-sickness, and that in a very short time.

The ship was now moving about in lively fashion, and as he mounted the poop again he held on convulsively, feeling almost as if his legs were of no use to him. But he had now reached the stage of passive endurance, and although he was conscious of suffering cold, hunger, and weariness, he felt dimly that he could hang on and bear it, since others around him were faring no better.

The relief was nearer than he thought. At two bells—five o’clock—there was a cry from forrard of “Coffee,” and the mate striding over to him said not unkindly, “Go an’ get yer coffee, boy.”

He answered with chattering teeth, “Thankye, sir,” and crawling down the ladder groped his way to the house, where he found Johnson already seated with a steaming pannikin of some brown liquid in one hand and a biscuit in the other.

“There’s yours,” gruffly said Johnson, indicating a pot hooked on to the side of a bunk; and Frank gratefully seized it as well as a biscuit out of the box.

It was not like anything he had drunk before which he could say was at all nice, but it was boiling hot and sweet, sending quite a glow through his shaking body. The biscuit was flinty, but Frank’s teeth were good, and besides he was savagely hungry, so that he really found himself enjoying this impromptu meal, and quite forgot that he was sitting in the house which had been such a place of horror to him. For the wind having changed, there was a current of pure air blowing through it, and most of its foulness had been swept away. As far as Frank was concerned, the worst of his probation was over.

By the time he had eaten his biscuit and finished his coffee he felt a different being, and when Johnson said, “You’d better get aft, it’s nearly three bells,” he was ready, as he felt, to face anything. So he hurried aft to his place on the poop and ventured to walk about a bit in spite of the motion of the ship, the mate saying nothing to him until four bells.

Then with a roar that startled Frank greatly the mate ordered, “Wash decks,” whereupon the watch came slouching aft with bare feet and trousers rolled up, carrying brooms and buckets, and Frank, having now a good look at them for the first time, could not help feeling another pang of deep disappointment. Were these the fine romantic fellows he had read of, these miserable-looking, curiously clad ragamuffins, more disreputable in appearance than any tramps he had ever seen, and speaking, when they did speak at all, in a language that he could not understand?

It was another added to the many problems which he had to solve by himself, but the present was not a time for doing so, for he found that his mind was fully occupied by the duties of carrying water and maintaining his balance withal as the ship rolled and the wet decks seemed as slippery as glass.

But he felt glad of one thing, this business was, if very wearisome to a lad who had never worked before, easily learned, so although the buckets of water seemed to grow heavier and heavier, and the quantity of them used was enormous, he stuck to it, did his best, and felt that he was getting on. He did not like the surly grumbling way everybody spoke, for it seemed to him that his efforts might have been recognised, but he grew to regard even that as a part of the business he had to learn, and was consoled.