tier
hatchway, in the midst of the flood of Heaven's blessed daylight, that
came pouring from aloft into this abyss, and very deliberately take out
his private store of viands, and there insultingly wag his jaws, with
the most complacent satisfaction, in the faces of his masters. The
contrast was too bad--the malice of it too tormenting. Whilst he was
masticating his beautiful white American crackers, and smacking his lips
over his savoury German sausage, we were grumbling over putrid bones and
weavilly biscuit, that we could not swallow, and yet hunger would not
permit us to desert. It was a floating repetition of the horrors of
Tantalus.

Well, to myself, this rascal was most submissive--most eager in forcing
upon me his services. He relieved my hammock-man of his duty; but,
somehow, nothing prospered to which he put his hand. The third night,
the nails of the cleat that fastened my head-clews up to the deck above
me, drew, and I came down by the run, head foremost; and immediately
where my head ought to have alighted on the deck was found the
carpenter's pitch kettle, with the blade of an axe in the centre of it,
and the edge uppermost. No one knew how it came there, and, had I shot
out as young gentlemen usually do on such occasions, I should, if I had
not been quite decapitated, at least have died by the axe. Not being
asleep when the descent took place, I grappled with my neighbour, the
old fat assistant-surgeon, and he with the next, and the three came down
on deck with a lunge that actually started the marine officer--who,
everybody knows, is the best sleeper on board. Happily for myself, I
fell from my hammock sideways. Next, the accommodating Joshua got the
sole charge of my chest, and, though nothing was missed, in a short time
everything was ruined. The cockroaches ate the most unaccountable holes
in my best uniforms, my shoes burst in putting them on, my boots cracked
all across the upper leathers, and the feet of my stockings came off
when I attempted to draw them on.

The obsequious Joshua was equally assiduous with his other six masters,
and even more successful; so that, in addition to being starved, there
was every possibility of our being reduced to nakedness. This was no
pleasant prospect, running out of tropical latitudes towards England, in
the month of January. In the course of six weeks, such a ragged,
woebegone, gaunt, and famished gang of reefers was never before huddled
together