down below; so that I might just as
well have been in a very stuffy stable on shore, for all I saw of the
run down Channel. My duty was to draw forage from the forward hold (a
gloomy, giddy operation), be responsible with my mate for the watering
of all the horses in my sub-division--thirty in number, for preparing
their feeds and "haying up" three times a day, and for keeping our
section of the stable-deck swept and clean. We started with very fine
weather, and soon fell into our new life, with, for me at least, a
strange absence of any sense of transition. The sea-life joined
naturally on to the barrack-life. Both are a constant round of
engrossing duties, in which one has no time to feel new departures.
The transition had come earlier, with the first day in barracks, and,
indeed, was as great and sudden a change, mentally and physically, as
one could possibly conceive. On the material side it was sharp enough;
but the mental change was stranger still. There was no perspective
left; no planning of the future, no questioning of the present; none
of that free play of mind and will with which we order our lives at
home; instead, utter abandonment to superior wills, one's only concern
the present point of time and the moment's duty, whatever it might be.

This is how we spent the day.

The trumpet blew reveille at six, and called us to early "stables,"
when the horses were fed and watered, and forage drawn. Breakfast was
at seven: the food rough, but generally good. We were split up into
messes of about fourteen, each of which elected two "mess orderlies,"
who drew the rations, washed up, swept the troop-deck, and were
excused all other duties. I, and my friend Gunner Basil Williams, a
colleague in my office at home, were together in the same mess.
Coffee, bread and butter, and something of a dubious, hashy nature,
were generally the fare at breakfast. I, as stableman, was constantly
with the horses, but for the rest the next event was morning stables,
about nine o'clock, which was a long and tedious business. The horses
would be taken out of their stalls, and half of us would lead them
round the stable-deck for exercise, while the rest took out the
partitions and cleaned the stalls. Then ensued exciting scenes in
getting them back again, an operation that most would not agree to
without violent compulsion--and small blame to the poor brutes. It
used to take our whole sub-division to shove my roan in. Each driver
has t