the doors carefully shut, a large part of every
sea that washed the decks would give our
forecastle a rinsing. The two doorways, when
fully open, were each of them about four feet
high, and just wide enough to allow a man to
squeeze in and out sideways.

Of course, by habit, we could all learn to
squeeze into our dark hole without knocking
our heads over much against the upper deck.
A wife from shore, if she came in to see one
of us, supposing she was clever enough at
stooping,—for in our homes at sea no full-grown
person can stand upright—would soon
bruise her shins in the dark, over our chests
strewn about the floor. If she was a tidy
woman, she would pine a bit to see the sort
of home her Bill had got into. Down the
middle of the hole that is allotted, let me say
again, to sixteen people, she would see, as
soon as her eyes could cut a way into the
gloom, a great spar four or five feet round, the
heel of the bowsprit, with a pair of bunks
fixed on each side of it, dividing the place
into two equal parts. Here are bunks, of
course, or berths as you call them, fixed
against the walls, and anybody standing in
one of the halves of the forecastle might
rest an elbow on each wall of berths. But
there is not clear deck even in that little
compass, for there are two rows of chests
further blocking up the space, and the clear
deck on either side of the bowsprit is a lane
only about twelve inches wide. So merchant
sailors lodge,—so we were accommodated in
the Hope; two of us could not pass unless
one mounted a chest and crouched upon it.
When the cables were bent, we had not even
our twelve inches of floor; the muddy chains
then rested on the only vacant planks, and
there was no rest for the sole of the sailor's
foot upon the floor of his own home.

The bunks in which we slept were no
worse than I have found sailors' beds to be
on board most vessels in the merchant
service. There were two tiers of them on
each side, three in each tier; those twelve,
with the four fixed on the heel of the bowsprit,
made up our number. Each bunk was
barely six feet long, and twenty inches wide.
The height of the whole forecastle being only
about five feet, we had less than two feet
space between one bunk, and the vent above
it. I slept in an upper bunk, using the heel of
a studding-sail boom for a pillow. My nose,
when I had got between the blankets, was
within three inches of the beam that crossed
above me, and if ever I forgot myself and
tried to raise my head at all, without first
pushing it out beyond the side board, I was
punished for my want of thought. Then
when I went to bed, of course a little skill
was necessary to get into it at all. I had to
put my elbow into one end of the bunk, and
my heel over the other end, raise my body
into a horizontal position, and then slide
myself in sideways, by a wriggling motion
that it's not in my power verbally to explain.
Once in, stretched on his back, with his broad
shoulders firmly wedged between the ship's
timbers on one side and the outer board on
the other; his head threatened with bruise
or breakage if he raises it incautiously;—
the seaman a-bed in his sea-going home
must lie as though he were fixed snugly in
his coffin. The luxury of drawing his knees
up to his chin, and coiling himself snugly in
the blankets, is of course put quite out of the
question.

So we were lodged aboard the Hope.
The hawse-holes through which the chain
passes, being only plugged up in a temporary
way with old tarpaulin, let in water every
time the ship dipped her nose into the sea.
The water reached the main deck through a
small scupper hole beneath the bunks, and
as the vessel pitched, came back into the
forecastle none the cleaner for its travels. In
this way there was kept up a continual wash
on the lee-side of the room, not well relished
by those of the crew whose beds and blankets
now and then were wetted by it. Then again,
through each of the two lower foremost bunks
there passed a mass of timber and copper
bolts, forming part of the cat-heads. The
seams surrounding the cat-heads being at
most times leaky from the working of the
ship, a cool salt stream was generally trickling
through them, so that the tenants of
those two bunks had both jam and pickle.
From the crevices around the iron spindle of
the capstan and the timber bits, two other
rivulets flowed slowly down the bowsprit and
across the narrow floor, spreading beneath
the chests, rotting their bottoms, and quietly
destroying our chief articles of property,
namely our shore-going suits of clothes.

I have sailed in some vessels, and I know
that there are many, in which the forecastle
does not contain so many bunks as bodies.
Some of the crew agree then to "turn in and
out" two men in different watches keeping
the same berth warm. In harbour, when all
hands are below together, some of the crew
are, in such a case, compelled to sleep on
chests.

Never did anybody, poet or romancing man,
describe a den that could be worse than a
top-gallant forecastle during a gale of wind
or a long spell of dirty weather. The men
get wet through in every watch, and hang up
their wet clothes, as they come in, on nails
driven into the beams. They steam like soup
and flavour our darkness with a moist and
nasty taste. The doors are kept well closed
to bar out the heavy sprays that dash against
them, and the forecastle is pitch dark day and
night, except when a man slips in with the
water at his heels, and shuts the slide up
suddenly.

Well, that's the forecastle. That is the
sailors' home at sea. When your landsmen
sing, as I hear butcher boys do, how they're
afloat, they're afloat on the fierce rolling tide,
the ocean's their home, and the bark is their