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“How is it you’re not at work, youngster?” said he.

“I’ve just woke up,” said I.

“Look here,” said he, “if you don’t call me sir, I shall have to call you sir, and I am sure it’s easier for you to say it than for me. Pull your boots and stockings off like a man, put them in that coil of rope there upon the hencoop, tuck your trousers up, lay hold of that scrubbing brush yonder and see what sort of job you’re going to make at whitening these decks.”

In a minute I was scrubbing with the rest of them, and it made me feel as if I was on the Margate sands to be trotting about with bare feet, with the salt brine sparkling and flashing about my ankles.

My memory at this point grows dim again, for I was rapidly approaching the unpleasant experience of sea-sickness. I recollect that I helped to dry the decks with a swab that was so heavy I could scarcely flourish it, and that I was shown by the third mate how to coil away a rope over a pin, also that I dragged with the others upon some gear which caused a staysail between the mainmast and the mizzen-mast to ascend; I then went below to breakfast, at which there was served up a dish of hissing brown steaks, each of them wide enough to have served as a garment for my young ribs. But by this time something of the weight of the wide sea beyond was in the river, the ship was faintly pitching, much too faintly perhaps to be taken notice of by anything but a delicate young stomach like mine. I felt that I was pale, and the sight of the heap of great brown steaks floating handsomely in grease, which took a caking of white, even as the eye watched, added not a little to the uncomfortable sensation that possessed me. The others plunged their knives and forks into the layers of meat and ate with avidity; but for my part I could only look on.