stays, etc. If we
add to this all the tarring, greasing, oiling, varnishing, painting,
scraping, and scrubbing which is required in the course of a long
voyage, and also remember this is all to be done in addition to
watching at night, steering, reefing, furling, bracing, making and
setting sail, and pulling, hauling, and climbing in every direction,
one will hardly ask, "What can a sailor find to do at sea?"

If, after all this labor--after exposing their lives and limbs in
storms, wet and cold,

"Wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch;
The lion and the belly-pinched wolf
Keep their fur dry;--"

the merchants and captain think that they have not earned their twelve
dollars a month, (out of which they clothe themselves,) and their salt
beef and hard bread, they keep them picking oakum--ad infinitum. This
is the usual resource upon a rainy day, for then it will not do to work
upon rigging; and when it is pouring down in floods, instead of letting
the sailors stand about in sheltered places, and talk, and keep
themselves comfortable, they are separated to different parts of the
ship and kept at work picking oakum. I have seen oakum stuff placed
about in different parts of the ship, so that the sailors might not be
idle in the snatches between the frequent squalls upon crossing the
equator. Some officers have been so driven to find work for the crew
in a ship ready for sea, that they have set them to pounding the
anchors (often done) and scraping the chain cables. The "Philadelphia
Catechism" is,

"Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,
And on the seventh--holystone the decks and scrape the cable."

This kind of work, of course, is not kept up off Cape Horn, Cape of
Good Hope, and in extreme north and south latitudes; but I have seen
the decks washed down and scrubbed, when the water would have frozen if
it had been fresh; and all hands kept at work upon the rigging, when we
had on our pea-jackets, and our hands so numb that we could hardly hold
our marline-spikes.

I have here gone out of my narrative course in order that any who read
this may form as correct an idea of a sailor's life and duty as
possible. I have done it in this place because, for some time, our
life was nothing but the unvarying repetition of these duties, which
can be better described together. Before leaving this description,
however, I would state, in order to show landsmen how little they know
of the natur