“Well, for once,” he said, “I'll show you how. Tomorrow you'll do it for yourself.”
“There,” he said, when he had lashed up the hammock, by what seemed to me to be art-magic, “don't you say you don't know how to lash a 'ammick. I've showed you once. Now shove it in the rack there. Up on deck with you.”
I ran up the ladder to the deck, thinking that this was not at all the kind of service which I had expected. When I got to the deck I felt happier; for it was a lovely bright morning. The schooner was under all sail, tearing along at what seemed to me to be great speed. We were out at sea now. England lay behind us, some miles away. I could see the windows gleaming in a little town on the shore. Ships were in sight, with rollers of foam whitening under them. Gulls dipped after fish. The clouds drove past. A fishing boat piled with fish was labouring up to London, her sails dark with spray. On the deck of the schooner some barefooted sailors were filling the wash-deck tubs at a hand-pump. One man was at work high aloft on the topsail yard, sitting across the yard with his legs dangling down, keeping his seat (as I thought) by balance. I found the scene so delightful that I gazed at it like a boy in a trance, was still staring, when the surly boor who had called me (he was the schooner's mate it seemed) came up behind me.
“Well,” he said, in the rough, bullying speech of a sailor, “do ye see it?”
“See what, sir?”
“What you're looking at.”
“Yes, sir,” I answered.
“Then you got no butter in your eyes, then. Why ain't you at work?”
“What am I to do, sir?”
“Do,” he said. “Ain't you Mr. Scott's servant?”