nowadays the only thing that flies in an American ship is
a belaying-pin. You don't know, you haven't a guess. How would you like
to go on deck for your middle watch, fourteen months on end, with all
your duty to do, and every one's life depending on you, and expect to
get a knife ripped into you as you come out of your state-room, or be
sand-bagged as you pass the boat, or get tripped into the hold if the
hatches are off in fine weather? That kind of shakes the starch out of
the brotherly love and New Jerusalem business. You go through the mill,
and you'll have a bigger grudge against every old shellback that dirties
his plate in the three oceans than the Bank of California could settle
up. No; it has an ugly look to it, but the only way to run a ship is to
make yourself a terror."

"Come, captain," said I, "there are degrees in everything. You know
American ships have a bad name, you know perfectly well if it wasn't for
the high wage and the good food, there's not a man would ship in one if
he could help; and even as it is, some prefer a British ship, beastly
food and all."

"O, the lime-juicers?" said he. "There's plenty booting in lime-juicers,
I guess; though I don't deny but what some of them are soft." And with
that he smiled, like a man recalling something. "Look here, that brings
a yarn in my head," he resumed, "and for the sake of the joke I'll give
myself away. It was in 1874 I shipped mate in the British ship _Maria_,
from 'Frisco for Melbourne. She was the queerest craft in some ways that
ever I was aboard of. The food was a caution; there was nothing fit to
put your lips to but the lime-juice, which was from the end bin no
doubt; it used to make me sick to see the men's dinners, and sorry to
see my own. The old man was good enough, I guess. Green was his name--a
mild, fatherly old galoot. But the hands were the lowest gang I ever
handled, and whenever I tried to knock a little spirit into them the old
man took their part. It was Gilbert and Sullivan on the high seas; but
you bet I wouldn't let any man dictate to me. 'You give me your orders,
Captain Green,' I said, 'and you'll find I'll carry them out; that's all
you've got to say. You'll find I do my duty,' I said; 'how I do it is my
look-out, and there's no man born that's going to give me lessons.'
Well, there was plenty dirt on board that _Maria_ first and last. Of
course the old man put my back up, and of course he put up the crew's,
and I had to re