When a quartering trade wind is picked up sailing is at its easiest; for a well-balanced suit of canvas will keep her bowling along night and day with just the lightest of touches at the wheel. Then is the time to bend her old sails {117} on; for, unlike a man, a ship puts on her old suit for fair weather and her new suit for foul. Then, too, is the time for dog-watch yarning, when pipes are lit without any fear of their having to be crammed half-smoked into the nearest pocket because all hands are called. Landsmen generally think that most watches aboard a wind-jammer are passed in yarns and smoking. But this is far from being the case. The mates and skipper keep everybody busy with the hundred-and-one things required to keep a vessel shipshape: painting, graining, brightening, overhauling the weak spots in the rigging, working the 'bear' to clean the deck with fine wet sand, helping whomever is acting as 'Chips' the carpenter, or the equally busy 'Sails'; or 'doing Peggy' for 'Slush' the cook, who much prefers wet grub to dry, slumgullion coffee to any kind of tea, ready-made hard bread to ship-baked soft, and any kind of stodge to the toothsome delights of dandyfunk and crackerhash. And all this is extra to the regular routine, with its lamp-lockers, binnacles, timekeeping, incessant look-out, and trick at the wheel. Besides, every man has to look after his own kit, which he has to buy with his own money, and his quarters, for which he alone is responsible. {118} So there is never much time to spare, with watch and watch about, all through the voyage; especially when all the ills that badly fed flesh is heir to on board a deepwaterman incapacitate some hands, while falls from aloft and various accidents knock out others. The skipper, boatswain, cook, steward, Chips, and Sails keep no watches, and hence are called 'the idlers,' a most misleading term, for they work a good deal harder than their counterparts ashore; though the mates and seamen often work harder still. There are seven watches in a day, reckoned from noon to noon: five of four hours each and two of two hours each. These two, the dog watches, are from four to six and six to eight each afternoon. The crew are divided into port and starboard watches, each under a mate. In Bluenose vessels the port watch was always called by the old name of larboard watch till only the other day. The starboard and larboard got their names because the starboard was the side on which the steering oar was hung before the rudder was invented, and the larboard was the side where the lading or cargo came in.