The little tug Arrow was right ahead; but she had eased her paddles and stopped towing us, preparatory to casting off her hawser and leaving the Silver Queen to her own devices. The good ship on her part seemed nothing loth to this; for, those on board were bustling about as fast as they could to make sail, so that they might actually start on their voyage—all the preliminary work of towing down the river by the aid of the tug being only so much child’s play, so to speak, having nothing to do with the proper business of the gallant vessel.
And here I suddenly became confronted with one of the discomforts of board-ship life, which contrasted vividly with the conveniences to which I had been accustomed at home ever since childhood.
Before presenting myself amongst the others I naturally thought of dressing, or rather, as I had gone to sleep in my clothes, of performing some sort of toilet and making myself as tidy as I could; but, lo and behold, when I looked round the cabin of the deck-house, nothing in the shape of a washhand-stand was to be seen, while my sea-chest being underneath a lot of traps, I was unable to open the lid of it and make use of the little basin within, as I wished to do if only to “christen it.”
I was completely nonplussed at first; but, a second glance showing me Tom Jerrold, one of my berthmates who had turned out before me, washing his face and hands in a bucket of sea-water in the scuppers, I followed suit, drying myself with a very dirty and ragged towel which he lent me in a friendly way, albeit I felt inclined to turn up my nose at it.
“You thought, I suppose,” observed Jerrold with a grin, “that you’d have a nice bath-room and a shampooing establishment for your accommodation—eh?”
“No, I didn’t,” said I, smiling too, and quite cheerful under the circumstances, having determined to act on my father’s advice, which Tim Rooney had subsequently confirmed, of never taking umbrage at any joke or chaff from my shipmates, but to face all my disagreeables like a man; “I think, though, we might make some better arrangement than this. I’ve got a little washhand-basin fixed up inside my chest under there, only I can’t get at it.”
“So have I in mine, old fellow,” he rejoined familiarly; “and it was only sheer laziness that prevented me rigging it up. The fact is, as you’ll soon find out, being at sea gets one into terribly slovenly habits, sailors generally making a shift of the first thing that comes to hand.”
“I see,” said I meditatively; looking no doubt awfully wise and solemn, for he laughed in a jolly sort of way.
“I tell you what, Graham,” he remarked affably as he proceeded to plaster his hair down on either side with the moistened palm of his hand in lieu of a brush. “You’re not half a bad sort of chap, though Weeks thought you too much of a stuck-up fine gentleman for us; and, d’you know, I’ll back you up if you like to keep our quarters in the deck-house here tidy, and set a better example for imitation than Master Weeks, or Matthews—though the latter has left us now, by the way, for a cabin in the saloon, the skipper having promoted him to third mate, as I heard him say just now. Do you agree, eh, to our making order out of chaos?”
“All right! I’ll try if you’ll help me,” I answered, reciprocating his friendly advances, as he seemed a nice fellow—much nicer, I thought, than that little snob Sam Weeks, with his vegetable-marrow sort of face, my original dislike to the latter being far from lessened by the observation Jerrold told me he had made about me! “I like things to be neat and tidy; and as my father used to say, ‘cleanliness is next to godliness.’”