“Well, by gosh, you’re a lucky feller; how many more of these ’ere you got, anyhow? Lem’me look at your knife,” as my new sheath knife turned up; “what did you give for that knife? I got mine down by Fulton Market for a quarter, and I’ll bet it’s as good as yours! Yes, sir!” he shouted, in response to an imperative call from the mate above; “I’m coming right along!” And he half choked himself in his effort to swallow the rich cake as he said, “Look here, young feller, you’d better hurry up too; old Bowker will give you rats if you don’t get on deck mighty quick!”
I put on my second best suit, all too good, as it proved, for what was expected of me, and hurried on deck. Mr. Bowker hunted up a scraper, which is a triangular piece of steel with a wooden handle, and initiated me into its use in scraping the pitch from a portion of the decks that had lately been calked; and this, the first real work I had ever done in my life, was also my first lesson in “the sailor’s art.”
At noon Jim and I were “knocked off,” as stopping work is termed, and told to go to the galley and carry the dinner down into the steerage. Jim seized the kid, a small wooden tub containing a rough piece of boiled beef, and left me to bring the “spuds,” as he called the potatoes. While the cook, who was as black as the ace of spades, was fishing these out of the coppers, he looked me over critically and said, “Wot’s yo’ name, boy?”
“Robert Kelson,” I replied.
“Look yere, boy, we don’t pomper no boys here wid no ‘Roberts.’ Yo’ name’s Bob ’board dis ship; you understand? Now, Bob, is dis yo’ fust voyage to sea?”
“Yes.”
“Co’se it is; any one can see dat. Well, Bob, if you ’haves yo’se’f and don’t cut up monkey shines, like dat boy Jim does, I no doubt you’ll get on very well. But you mus’n’t ’spect to be pompered. I reckon you done had too much ob dat a’ready by yo’ looks. Now you go ’long down and eat yo’ dinner, and den you come up and pick dis chicken fer me, and I gwine gib you dese tapioca puddin’ scrapin’s fer yo’ dessert. I likes yo’ looks, and I gwine stand friend to you, boy!”
I had learned at boarding-school the lesson that it is a good thing to be friends with the cook, so I assented to this proposal and went below with the potatoes.
“Chips,” as the carpenter is called on shipboard, although we boys were not permitted to take this liberty, was a gaunt, red-headed, surly, opinionated Dane, a good mechanic and a splendid seaman, but anything but an agreeable messmate. As I came down he hailed me: “Vot, in de name of Heffen, you been doin’ all dis time wid dose potatoes, you boy? You ’spose I am goin’ to wait all day for my dinner while you’re gorming ’round the galley, you lazy hound? If you try any of your games on me, my lad, I’ll warm you up wid a fathom of rattlin’ stuff!” and so he grumbled on, while I endeavored to explain that the cook had detained me.
“Vell, don’t you do it again; that’s all,” and he picked out the best of the potatoes and cut off the choicest part of the beef, leaving me the fat, which I detested, for my share.