Jim wants to be warm. He knows the wind will be sharp, even though his ship is headed for the warm Mediterranean Sea. It’s wintertime and still cold out on the Atlantic Ocean.
Jim and the three men who share his bunkroom are ready for work—almost ready. First they go down the passageway to the mess, which is their word for dining room. There they have coffee from a big steaming urn that is always kept full and hot. In another minute Jim steps out onto the leeward side of the deck—the side away from the wind. Although he’s in a hurry, he waits there sheltered from the wind for a few minutes while his eyes get used to the dark. Jim is going to stand his watch. That means he will work for four hours.
Jim is an AB—an Able Bodied Seaman. An AB works out on deck instead of down inside the ship in the engine room or in the kitchen, which he calls the galley. All the men who work on a ship are seamen. Only deckhands are called sailors. And only those sailors who have passed examinations and have been at sea for a certain length of time are AB’s. The other sailors are called ordinary seamen or ordinaries for short.
As soon as his eyes can see in the dark, Jim walks toward the bow which is the front of the ship. As the deck rises and falls and tilts under his feet, he manages from long practice, to keep his balance, but he also slides one hand along the rail on top of the bulwark, a kind of low wall that runs all around the deck.
In good weather he would go to the bow and stand there, watching for anything there might be in the ocean ahead. But tonight waves may splash over the bow. An unexpected wave can knock a man down or even wash him overboard. It will be safer high up in the crow’s nest above the deck. Besides he can see farther from up there. So Jim climbs to the little enclosed platform high on the foremast.
In a very bad storm Jim would not go outside. He would stand watch in the wheelhouse. This is a room with a big window high above the deck in the part of the ship called the house. The room gets its name because the wheel that steers the ship is in it.
Jim knows it is good manners always to be a little early when you go to take the place of another seaman whose watch is over. So he doesn’t waste any time as he scrambles up the steel rungs in the ladder on the mast.
He pokes his head through the hole in the floor of the crow’s nest. There he finds Juan, who is cold and glad enough to climb down and get into his warm bunk.
Juan has a telephone strapped on his head. He uses it to talk with the third mate, the officer in charge of the ship who works in the wheelhouse. When Juan sees Jim, he says into the telephone, “Crow’s nest to wheelhouse—being properly relieved, sir.” Now the mate, listening to the loudspeaker in the wheelhouse, knows that Jim is the lookout in the crow’s nest.