to everyone else on board he was the
constant butt.

Mr Farmer, our first-lieutenant, was a smart and somewhat exacting
officer. He used to rig the smoke-sail some twelve feet high, across
the mizzen-mast, and make the young gentlemen just caught, and the boys
of the ship, lay out upon it, in order that they might practice furling
after a safe method. At first, nothing could persuade Reuben to go a
single step up the rigging--not even the rope's-end of the boatswain's
mate. Now this delicacy was quite at variance with Mr Farmer's ideas;
so, in order to overcome it by the gentlest means in the world, Reuben
had the option given him of being flogged, or of laying out on the
smoke-sail yard, just to begin with, and to get into the way of it. It
was a laughable thing to see this huge clown hanging with us boys on the
thin yard, and hugging it as closely as if he loved it. He had a
perfect horror of getting to the end of it. At a distance, when our
smoke-sail yard was _manned_; we looked like a parcel of larks spitted,
with one great goose in the midst of us. "Doey, get beyond me, zur;
doey, Mr Rattlin," he would say. "Ah! zur, I'd climb with any bragger
in this ship for a rook's nest, where I ha' got a safe bough to stand
upon; but to dance upon this here see-sawing line, and to call it a
horse, too, ben't Christian loike."

But his troubles were soon to cease. He was made a waister, and, at
furling sails stationed on the main yard. I will anticipate a little
that we may have done with him. The winter had set in severely, with
strong gales, with much frost and snow. We were not clear yet of the
chops of the Channel, and the weather became so bad, that it was found
necessary to lie-to under try-sails and close-reefed main-top sail.
About two bells in the first dog-watch the first-lieutenant decided upon
furling the main-sail. Up on the main-yard Reuben was forced to go; he
went to leeward, and the seamen, full of mischief; kept urging him
further and further away from the bunt. I was with one of the oldsters
in the maintop; the maintop-sail had just been close-reefed. I had a
full view of the lads on the main-yard, and the terror displayed in
Reuben's face was at once ludicrous and horrible. It was bitterly cold,
the rigging was stiffened by frost, and the cutting north-east wind came
down upon the men on the lee-yard-arm out of the belly of the topsail
with tremendous force, added to which, the ship, notwi