about at each roll a few feet below me. My hammock was
slung in a draught from the main hatchway. People came down the hatchway
during the night to fetch coils of rope or tackles. Tired as I was, I
slept very badly that first night on board ship. The schooner seemed to
be full of queer, unrelated movements. The noise of the water slipping
past was like somebody talking. The striking of the bells kept me from
sleeping. I did not get to sleep till well into the middle watch (about
two in the morning) after which I slept brokenly until a rough voice
bawled in my ear to get up out of that, as it was time to wash down.

I put my clothes on hurriedly, wondering where I should find a basin
in which to wash myself. I could see none in the 'tweendecks; but I
supposed that there would be some in the cabins, which opened off the
'tweendecks on each side. Now a 'tweendecks (I may as well tell you
here) is nothing more than a deck of a ship below the upper deck. If
some of my readers have never been in a ship, let them try to imagine
themselves descending from the upper deck--where all the masts stand--by
a ladder fixed in a square opening known as a hatchway. About six feet
down this ladder is the 'tweendecks, a long narrow room, with a ceiling
so low that unless you bend, you bump your head against the beams.

If you will imagine a long narrow room, only six feet high, you will
know what a 'tweendecks is like. Only in a real 'tween-decks it is
always rather dark, for the windows (if you care to call them so) are
thick glass bull's-eyes which let in very little light. A glare of light
comes down the hatchways. Away from the hatchways a few battle-lanterns
are hung, to keep up some pretence of light in the darkest corners. At
one end of this long narrow room in La Reina a wooden partition, running
right across from side to side, made a biggish chamber called "the
cabin," where the officers took their meals. A little further along the
room, one on each side of it, were two tiny partitioned cabins, about
seven feet square, in which the officers slept, two in each cabin one
above the other, in shelf-beds, or bunks. My hammock had been slung
between these cabins, a little forward of them. When I turned out, I
saw that the rest of the 'tweendecks was piled with stores of all kinds,
lashed down firmly to ringbolts. Right forward, in the darkness of the
ship's bows, I saw other hammocks where the sailors slept.

I was wondering what I wa