“Where is my bedroom?” said I.
“No bedrooms at sea, young ’un,” he answered. “What callin’s yourn? Are ’ee a sailor man? My precious eyes! there’s buttons! See here, my lively: when the shanks of them buttons is worn off, I’ll give ye the value of a fardenswuth of silver spoons for the whole boiling of ’em.”
“I promised my father not to sell my clothes,” I answered, with dignity. “Where’s my bedroom, I say?”
“Why, there,” said he, pointing with a tar-stained stump of forefinger into the dusk. “Shut your eyes and walk straight, and your nose’ll steer ye the right course, I lay.”
I spied a door to the right some little distance abaft the part of the deck that was pierced by the great mainmast, and making for it, entered, and found myself in a long narrow cabin fitted on either hand with a double row of bunks, or sleeping-shelves, and lighted by three little round portholes, called “scuttles.” Bright as the day was outside, in this cabin it was no better than twilight, and I hung for some moments in the doorway, scarcely able to distinguish objects.
When presently I could fairly use my sight I took notice of a thin slip of a table, penetrated by stanchions, up or down which it could be made to travel as space happened to be wanted. At the aftermost extremity athwart this interior were two or three shelves containing tin dishes, pannikins, coarse black-handled knives and forks, jars of pickles, red tins of preserved potatoes, and other such commodities: the produce, as I afterwards heard, of the amount which each midshipman had to subscribe in a sum of ten guineas to what was called “the mess”—and a mess it was!
Under these shelves stood a cask of flour, and another of exceedingly moist sugar, and an immense jar of vinegar. Here and there against the bulkhead partitions between the bunks hung a sou’wester or a coat of oilskin; whilst under the lower tier of bunks you caught a glimpse of the soles and heels of sea boots and shoes, with a thin canvas bag, perhaps, like a man’s leg. In most of the bunks lay a heap of rude bedding, roughly-made mattresses, and stout blankets.
Immediately facing the door there was stretched, in one of the upper sleeping-shelves, a young red-faced youth. He was in his shirt and trousers, and was smoking a short sooty clay pipe. He eyed me out of a pair of little black eyes, which winked drowsily on either side of his immense nose, the polished point of which caught the ruddy glow of his pipe-bowl as he sucked at it, and shone over the edge of his bunk as though it were a glowworm. There was nobody else in the cabin but this youth.
“‘IS THIS A BEDROOM?’ SAID I.”