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The gale increased in violence very fast, and it was well on to four bells before she was snugged down—that is, reduced to such sail as she could carry with safety—and the wearied men who had been on watch since eight in the morning were able to crawl below and get something to eat. The watch on deck had plenty to do securing spars and other movables about the decks, and Frank watching them wondered why they did not take more notice of the threatening waves and of the great masses of water that were continually tumbling upon the deck of the deeply laden ship. But by this time he had begun to learn the sailor’s first lesson, to endure and keep doing what there is to be done with an utter disregard of the body’s claims to attention, and had he known it, he had made a long stride in his knowledge.

Bad weather having thus set in, lasted without intermission for several days and nights, during the whole of which our hero never changed his clothes, never washed, and grew not to care a bit about it, although, had he looked at himself in a glass, which he never did, he would have been horrified to find how begrimed and unwholesome-looking he had become. Of course he had the example of the elder boys, who seemed quite lost to all sense of decency both in behaviour and conversation, from lack of any kind of supervision.