outh-east breeze
tempering the effect of the sun, which, however, still shone down on us
at noon with tropical force, its rays being as potent almost as at the
Equator.

But the sea had lost all that glassy brazen look it had in the calm
latitudes, now dancing with life and as blue as the heavens above it;
while as our gallant ship sailed on, running pretty large on the port
tack with everything set that could draw--skysails being hoisted on top
of the royals and staysails, and trysails on every mast, with the
foretopmast staysail, jib and flying jib forward, and upper and lower
stu'n'sails spread out to windward--she looked like some beautiful bird
in full flight with outstretched wings, her motion through the water
being so easy and graceful, while the sparkling spray was tossed up
sometimes over the sprit-sail yard as she ever and anon dipped her bows,
as if curtsying to Neptune. It seemed to me the most delightful thing
in the world to be there, ship and sea and air and sky being all alike
in harmony, expressing the poetry of progression!

My work, too, although we had plenty to do, to "keep us out of
mischief," as the captain said, was not too hard, especially at this
period.

In the morning, after an early coffee, when few thought of turning in
again although it might be their watch below, the weather was so
enjoyable, the order was given for "brooms and buckets aft," and the
first duty of the day was attended to. This was to scrub decks, just as
in a well-ordered household the servant cleans the door-step before
anyone is astir; the decks of a ship giving as good a notion of what her
commander is like, as the door-step of a house does of its mistress!

For this job the men forward rigged the head pump and sluiced the
forecastle and main-deck; while we apprentices had to wash down the
poop, having a fine time over it dowsing one another with buckets of
water, and chasing each other round the mizzen-mast and binnacle, or
else dodging the expected deluge behind the skylight--sometimes awaking
Captain Gillespie up, and making him come up the companion in a towering
rage to ask "what the dickens" we were "kicking up all that row for?"

Once, as he came up in this way, Tom Jerrold caught him full in the face
with a bucket of water he was pitching at me; and wasn't there a shindy
over it, that's all! "Old Jock" was unable to find out who did it, for
of course none of us would tell on Tom, and the water in the ca