ave_
vouchsafed the morning hammocks to their crew. Heaven bless such
tender-hearted officers; and may they and their descendants--ashore or
afloat--have sweet and pleasant slumbers while they live, and an
undreaming siesta when they die.

It is concerning such things as the subject of this chapter that
special enactments of Congress are demanded. Health and comfort--so far
as duly attainable under the circumstances--should be legally
guaranteed to the man-of-war's-men; and not left to the discretion or
caprice of their commanders.

CHAPTER XXII.

WASH-DAY AND HOUSE-CLEANING IN A MAN-OF-WAR.

Besides the other tribulations connected with your hammock, you must
keep it snow-white and clean; who has not observed the long rows of
spotless hammocks exposed in a frigate's nettings, where, through the
day, their outsides, at least, are kept airing?

Hence it comes that there are regular mornings appointed for the
scrubbing of hammocks; and such mornings are called
_scrub-hammock-mornings;_ and desperate is the scrubbing that ensues.

Before daylight the operation begins. All hands are called, and at it
they go. Every deck is spread with hammocks, fore and aft; and lucky
are you if you can get sufficient superfices to spread your own hammock
in. Down on their knees are five hundred men, scrubbing away with
brushes and brooms; jostling, and crowding, and quarrelling about using
each other's suds; when all their Purser's soap goes to create one
indiscriminate yeast.

Sometimes you discover that, in the dark, you have been all the while
scrubbing your next neighbour's hammock instead of your own. But it is
too late to begin over again; for now the word is passed for every man
to advance with his hammock, that it may be tied to a net-like
frame-work of clothes-lines, and hoisted aloft to dry.

That done, without delay you get together your frocks and trowsers, and
on the already flooded deck embark in the laundry business. You have no
special bucket or basin to yourself--the ship being one vast wash-tub,
where all hands wash and rinse out, and rinse out and wash, till at
last the word is passed again, to make fast your clothes, that they,
also, may be elevated to dry.

Then on all three decks the operation of holy-stoning begins, so called
from the queer name bestowed upon the principal instruments employed.
These are ponderous flat stones with long ropes at each end, by which
the stones are slidden about, to a