Prison man-of-war world of ours for another and a better.

From the foregoing account of the great difficulty we had in killing
time while in port, it must not be inferred that on board of the
Neversink in Rio there was literally no work to be done, at long
intervals the _launch_ would come alongside with water-casks, to be
emptied into iron tanks in the hold. In this way nearly fifty thousand
gallons, as chronicled in the books of the master's mate, were decanted
into the ship's bowels--a ninety day's allowance. With this huge Lake
Ontario in us, the mighty Neversink might be said to resemble the
united continent of the Eastern Hemisphere--floating in a vast ocean
herself, and having a Mediterranean floating in her.

CHAPTER XLIII.

SMUGGLING IN A MAN-OF-WAR.

It is in a good degree owing to the idleness just described, that,
while lying in harbour, the man-of-war's-man is exposed to the most
temptations and gets into his saddest scrapes. For though his vessel be
anchored a mile from the shore, and her sides are patrolled by sentries
night and day, yet these things cannot entirely prevent the seductions
of the land from reaching him. The prime agent in working his
calamities in port is his old arch-enemy, the ever-devilish god of grog.

Immured as the man-of-war's-man is, serving out his weary three years
in a sort of sea-Newgate, from which he cannot escape, either by the
roof or burrowing underground, he too often flies to the bottle to seek
relief from the intolerable ennui of nothing to do, and nowhere to go.
His ordinary government allowance of spirits, one gill per diem, is not
enough to give a sufficient to his listless senses; he pronounces his
grog basely _watered_; he scouts at it as _thinner than muslin;_ he
craves a more vigorous _nip at the cable_, a more sturdy _swig at the
halyards;_ and if opium were to be had, many would steep themselves a
thousand fathoms down in the densest fumes of that oblivious drug. Tell
him that the delirium tremens and the mania-a-potu lie in ambush for
drunkards, he will say to you, "Let them bear down upon me, then,
before the wind; anything that smacks of life is better than to feel
Davy Jones's chest-lid on your nose." He is reckless as an avalanche;
and though his fall destroy himself and others, yet a ruinous commotion
is better than being frozen fast in unendurable solitudes. No wonder,
then, that he goes all lengths to procure the thing he craves; no
wonde