“No, sir.”
“That's Tower Hill,” he answered, “where traitors, I mean conspirators like you or me, are beheaded. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “To have your head cut off.”
“Yes,” he said. “With all that hill black with people. The scaffold hung with black making a sort of platform in the middle. Then soldiers, with drums, all round. You put your head over a block, so that your neck rests on the wood. Then the executioner comes at you with an axe. Then your head is shown to the people. 'This is the head of a traitor.' We may all end in that way, on that little hill there. You must be very careful how you carry the letters, Hyde.”
After this hint, he showed me a hammock in the schooner's 'tweendecks, telling me that I should soon be accustomed to that kind of bed. “It is a little awkward at first,” he said, “especially the getting in part; but, when once snugly in, it is the most comfortable kind of bed in the world.” After undressing by the light of a huge ship's lantern, which Mr. Jermyn called a battle-lantern, I turned into my hammock, rather glad to be alone. Now that I was pledged to this conspiracy business, with some knowledge of what it might lead to, I half wished myself well out of it. The 'tweendecks was much less comfortable than the bedroom which I had left so gaily such a very little time before. I had exchanged a good prison for a bad one. The smell of oranges, so near to the hold in which they were stored, was overpowering, mixed, as it was, with the horrible ship-smell of decaying water (known as bilge-water) which flopped about at each roll a few feet below me. My hammock was slung in a draught from the main hatchway. People came down the hatchway during the night to fetch coils of rope or tackles. Tired as I was, I slept very badly that first night on board ship. The schooner seemed to be full of queer, unrelated movements. The noise of the water slipping past was like somebody talking. The striking of the bells kept me from sleeping. I did not get to sleep till well into the middle watch (about two in the morning) after which I slept brokenly until a rough voice bawled in my ear to get up out of that, as it was time to wash down.
I put my clothes on hurriedly, wondering where I should find a basin in which to wash myself. I could see none in the 'tweendecks; but I supposed that there would be some in the cabins, which opened off the 'tweendecks on each side. Now a 'tweendecks (I may as well tell you here) is nothing more than a deck of a ship below the upper deck. If some of my readers have never been in a ship, let them try to imagine themselves descending from the upper deck—where all the masts stand—by a ladder fixed in a square opening known as a hatchway. About six feet down this ladder is the 'tweendecks, a long narrow room, with a ceiling so low that unless you bend, you bump your head against the beams.
If you will imagine a long narrow room, only six feet high, you will know what a 'tweendecks is like. Only in a real 'tween-decks it is always rather dark, for the windows (if you care to call them so) are thick glass bull's-eyes which let in very little light. A glare of light comes down the hatchways. Away from the hatchways a few battle-lanterns are hung, to keep up some pretence of light in the darkest corners. At one end of this long narrow room in La Reina a wooden partition, running right across from side to side, made a biggish chamber called “the cabin,” where the officers took their meals. A little further along the room, one on each side of it, were two tiny partitioned cabins, about seven feet square, in which the officers slept, two in each cabin one above the other, in shelf-beds, or bunks. My hammock had been slung between these cabins, a little forward of them. When I turned out, I saw that the rest of the 'tweendecks was piled with stores of all kinds, lashed down firmly to ringbolts. Right forward, in the darkness of the ship's bows, I saw other hammocks where the sailors slept.
I was wondering what I was to do about washing, when the rough man who had called me a few minutes before came down to ask me why I was not up on deck. I said that I was wondering where I could wash myself.
“Wash yourself,” he said. “You haven't made yourself dirty yet. You don't wash at sea till your work's done for the day. Why, haven't you lashed your hammock yet?”
“Please, sir,” I said, “I don't know how.”