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d most of the crockery- ware and glasses in the steward's pantry, besides causing the benches round the saloon table and the chairs to fetch away from their lashings. For days past, our meals had resembled amateur picnics more than anything else--whenever we were able to get them, that is, the old regularity of breakfast and lunch and dinner being completely abolished; for the captain and Mr Marline and myself had to take odd snacks and stray bites at various hours whenever opportunity and appetite allowed their indulgence. Harry, the steward, was at his wit's end to get things in proper keeping. No sooner had he cleared up one batch of breakages and made matters ship-shape than over would sway the _Josephine_ hard to port; when, bang would go something else, undoing in one instant the work of hours of labour in putting the place below in order. "Lor' a mussy, me nebber get tings right nohow!" he would exclaim, setting to work again; and then, a sea would come floating in over the combings of the cabin bulkhead, tumbling him over and washing him aft amidst the debris, almost drowning the man before he could fish himself up again and set to his task anew. His toil, like that of Sisyphus, was ever being renewed when on the verge of completion. To me, however, all these little disagreeables seemed immensely jolly; so, whenever the captain or Mr Marline or Harry happened to get capsized in this way down in the cabin during the day, it sent me at once into fits of merriment, the fact of my being washed off my feet as well only adding to the enjoyment of the joke, for I could grin quite as much with my own head in the scuppers and my mouth full of water as I would when the others were similarly situated. "Bless the boy!" Captain Miles said. "He's a regular sailor. He laughs at everything." And so I did; especially one afternoon, when a sea coming in suddenly so jammed Mr Marline inside an arm-chair, whose seat had given way, that the watch had to be called below to extricate him. The mate took the matter with great good-humour, I may add, only saying to me, "Ah, never mind, Master Tom, we'll see who'll laugh best bye and bye." Jake used to sneak down on the sly to put my bunk in order so that I might be more comfortable, having, like most pure negroes, a thorough contempt for the mulatto steward. He believed him quite incapable of looking after me properly. "Him only poor trash, Mass' Tom," he would
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