chase ports,"
through which the chase guns or "stern-chasers pointed. Only one gun (a
long three pounder on a swivel) was mounted; for guns take up a lot of
room. With two guns in that little cabin there would not have been room
enough to swing a cat. You need six feet for the proper swinging of a
cat, so a man-of-war boatswain told me. The cat meant is the cat of nine
tails with which they used to flog seamen. To flog properly one needs a
good swing, so my friend said.

"There you are," said the mate of the schooner. "Now down on your knees.
Scrub the floor here. See you get it mucho blanco."

He left me feeling much ashamed at having to work like a common ship's
boy, instead of like a prince's page, which is what I had thought
myself. Like many middle-class English boys I had been brought up to
look on manual work as degrading. I was filled with shame at having
to scrub this dirty deck. I, who, only yesterday, had lorded it over
Ephraim, as though I were a superior being. You boys who go to good
schools try to learn a little humbleness. You may think your parents
very fine gentlefolk; but in the world, outside a narrow class, the
having gentle parents will not help one much. It may be that you, for
all your birth, have neither the instincts nor the intellect to preserve
the gentility your parents made for you. You are no gentleman till
you have proved it. Your right level may be the level of the betting
publican, or of the sneak-thief, or of things even lower than these. It
is nothing to be proud of that your parents are rich enough to keep your
hands clean of joyless, killing toil, at an age when many better men
are old in slavery. Try to be thankful for it; not proud. Leisure is
the most sacred thing life has. A wise man would give his left hand for
leisure. You that have it given to you by the mercy of gentle birth,
regard it as a trust; make noble use of it. Many great men waste half
their energies in the struggle for that which you regard, poor fools, as
your right, as something to brag of.

I had never scrubbed a floor in my life; but I had seen it done, without
taking much account of the art in it. I set to work, feeling more
degraded each moment, as the hardness of the deck began to make my knees
sore. When I had done about half of the cabin (in a lazy, neglectful
way, leaving patches unscrubbed, only just wetted over, so as to seem
clean to a chance observer) I thought that I would do no more; but wait
til