a point of flying to the first oyster-cellar, and shutting
themselves up in a box with nothing but a plate of stewed oysters, some
crackers, the castor, and a decanter of old port.

Still another way of killing time in harbour, is to lean over the
bulwarks, and speculate upon where, under the sun, you are going to be
that day next year, which is a subject full of interest to every living
soul; so much so, that there is a particular day of a particular month
of the year, which, from my earliest recollections, I have always kept
the run of, so that I can even now tell just where I was on that
identical day of every year past since I was twelve years old. And,
when I am all alone, to run over this almanac in my mind is almost as
entertaining as to read your own diary, and far more interesting than
to peruse a table of logarithms on a rainy afternoon. I always keep the
anniversary of that day with lamb and peas, and a pint of sherry, for
it comes in Spring. But when it came round in the Neversink, I could
get neither lamb, peas, nor sherry.

But perhaps the best way to drive the hours before you four-in-hand, is
to select a soft plank on the gun-deck, and go to sleep. A fine
specific, which seldom fails, unless, to be sure, you have been
sleeping all the twenty-four hours beforehand.

Whenever employed in killing time in harbour, I have lifted myself up
on my elbow and looked around me, and seen so many of my shipmates all
employed at the same common business; all under lock and key; all
hopeless prisoners like myself; all under martial law; all dieting on
salt beef and biscuit; all in one uniform; all yawning, gaping, and
stretching in concert, it was then that I used to feel a certain love
and affection for them, grounded, doubtless, on a fellow-feeling.

And though, in a previous part of this narrative, I have mentioned that
I used to hold myself somewhat aloof from the mass of seamen on board
the Neversink; and though this was true, and my real acquaintances were
comparatively few, and my intimates still fewer, yet, to tell the
truth, it is quite impossible to live so long with five hundred of your
fellow-beings, even if not of the best families in the land, and with
morals that would not be spoiled by further cultivation; it is quite
impossible, I say, to live with five hundred of your fellow-beings, be
they who they may, without feeling a common sympathy with them at the
time, and ever after cherishing some sort of