“Stopping the old ship from rolling, sir.”
“Well, I guess you have worked at that about long enough; now point yourself aloft, and try your hand at slushing down the masts; away you go!”
Poor Mackey starts off, grumbling that they should give him a work-up job for trying to stop the ship from pitching about so. He gets up aloft, and finds rather a difficult job before him.
“How shall I hang on, sir?”
“By your eyelids.”
“But I can’t do it, sir.”
“Then let go; probably the deck will bring you up.”
As this is all the consolation Mackey gets, he goes to work, muttering all sorts of invectives against whale-ships and mean men, and wishing them all in Tophet, and that he was at home, down in Nova Scotia, and guesses he would not trouble salt water again.
Our pompous third officer was very much opposed to allowing the men to sit down in the night watches, for fear they should take a short nap now and then. We had one fellow on board who was one of the laziest fellows in existence, so very lazy that before we were two weeks out he had received the appropriate sobriquet of “Lazy Lawrence.” He possessed, in addition to the excellent trait of character above mentioned, that of being the most inveterate liar ever known, and at the same time the greatest sleepyhead on board. As soon as he would come on deck in the middle, or morning watch, he would invariably bring himself to an anchor somewhere, and then—he was fast asleep. One night one of the crew, stationed on the look-out, espied him, and, thinking to have a little sport, goes aft to the binnacle lamp (which is the lamp that gives the light to the helmsman at night), covered his hands with oily smut, and, coming forward to the place where Lawrence was so quietly reposing, probably dreaming of his home, “’way down East, in the State of Maine,” and the farm, drew both hands very quietly across the poor fellow’s face several times, giving him very much the appearance of a molasses-colored darkey. Next morning all hands were called to go through the usual process of washing decks, etc. Lawrence, making his appearance with the rest, presented a comical spectacle. All hands roared with laughter; he, not imagining what was the cause of their merriment, joined in. At last the chief mate, who had an inkling of the matter, sang out,
“What is the matter with you this morning, Lawrence; are you sick?”