“I can see the ‘spuds’ all right,” said I; “but where’s the Jonah?”
“That be the bone, silly!”
With which withering rejoinder, Larrikins left us to enjoy ourselves with the food he contemned; though he probably went away to make a hearty dinner off the same at his own mess on the deck below, where his division “hung out.”
Nothing further of any note occurred during the afternoon to mar the harmony or vary the monotony of our ‘bag and hammock drill,’ at which we were religiously kept up to the time to leave off work; when we enjoyed again our tea-supper, and skylarked afterwards till it was time to ‘turn in,’ which we managed to do now more comfortably as well as expeditiously than on the night before; while, I may add, my dreams happily were not disturbed by any storms and thunder-claps of that imp Larrikins’ contrivance.
The next day, Saturday, it was a case of ‘wash and scrub decks,’ and wash and scrub everything, I think, from early morning till dewy eve.
A very ‘dewy’ eve it was, too, if dampness made it so; but if one did feel wet and miserable, as I confess I was, the remembrance it brought back to my mind of my mother’s house-cleaning at home being almost too vivid to be pleasant, still, everybody on board had the satisfaction of knowing that the ship was as smart as holystone and sand could make her, from upper deck to keelson, I verily believe!
I was none the less miserable, either, the following morning, when all the boys were rigged out in their best and inspected by the captain; for the tailor, true to the character of all ‘snips’ since the days when Adam started in that line with his fig-leaf costume, never sent on board, as he promised, the uniforms of us unfortunate novices, so we could neither make a decent appearance with the rest of our comrades, nor have permission to go ashore—‘unclothed’ scarecrows, as some of us were, would have seemed queer fish to come from a well-ordered ship.
On Monday, however, all things were made right in this respect; and, having satisfactorily passed ‘bag and hammock drill,’ the test of our novitiate, I and my fellow-unfortunates became not only clad like our fellows, but were enrolled amongst the rest of the second-class boys, and appointed to our proper place in the ship.
My number being 2799, through some occult system of nautical numeration, I was detailed to the ‘Third,’ or second starboard, division of the ship’s company; so I joined mess Number 38, which was on the port side on the lower deck, the first one aft of the schoolroom.