r the
break of the poop to right away forwards just abaft the foremast, was a
row of water-casks. A couple of these had their tops sawn off
lengthwise and contained several live turtle which Captain Miles was
hopeful of carrying home safely in time for the next ensuing banquet at
the Mansion House on lord mayor's day, an enterprising ship's chandler
in the Minories having given him an order to that effect before he left
England on his voyage out to the West Indies. In a similar way, against
the sides of the poop were fixed what looked at first sight to be
benches for sitting down upon, but which on closer inspection I
discovered to be hen-coops,--their occupants projecting their long necks
and heads therefrom, in much perplexity evidently at their strange fate
in being thus brought to sea; for, as was the case with myself, this was
their first experience of what life on board ship was like, and the
exigencies of the cabin table would most probably cause it to be their
last!

It was not until the fourth day after we had set sail from Grenada that
I was able to note all these particulars. Up to that time I had been
too much interested with the moving panorama around me to notice things
inboard; and, besides, the motion of the _Josephine_, when she got
lively in the seaway amongst the islands, produced an uneasy feeling
which led me ere long to retire below and bewail my old home and those
from whom I had been so ruthlessly severed with greater grief than I had
felt before. I suffered from that fearful nausea which Father Neptune
imposes as a penance on the majority of his votaries, and it was
wonderful how very melancholy the sensation made me.

However, I struggled gallantly against the fell foe, and, one morning, I
crawled out of my bunk early, just as the men began to wash down the
decks, the first work of the day aboard ship. This was shortly after we
had cleared the island of Sombrero, and when the _Josephine_ was working
her way out to sea.

At first I stopped in the waist, near the entrance to the cabin, but
Davis, the second mate, who stood with his trousers tucked up showing
his bare feet and legs, superintending the hands sluicing the water
about from the hose attached to the head pump out on the forecastle,
told me politely to sheer off, as they wanted no idlers in the way; so,
I ascended the poop-ladder, and was commiserating the poor fowls in the
hen-coops along the rails, when Captain Miles, who was