"We began it. The men all worked with a will, and I am certain that as much was done as on the previous voyage. I took special pains to compare, and all through I noticed that there was more drive, and less loafing, going for a drink, turns round the foremast, and long spells at the grindstone. On some of the large jobs, too, I had a good chance to judge. I suppose there's no job that admits of as many 'soger moves' as scrubbing ship outside. The men come up on deck every little while to haul up or 'fleet' the stages they are working on, and then they spin out the time before they get back by sharpening knives and scrapers, or getting a drink, and a good many other moves that every one knows, who has ever had to follow up old sailors. "When we had all hands we scrubbed the ship around outside in one day and thought we had done a smart piece of work; but with watch and watch we scrubbed her and cleaned the chain-plates below the channels, beside, in the same time, and as far as I could see the work was done fully as well. The difference was, that the men all felt an interest in showing how the watch and watch system would work, and there was no dodging, or loafing, or spinning yarns on the stages. "Now I should like to have you do the same thing this passage, and the fact is, I want to see it proved a second time before I go over to it altogether." [Illustration: Second officer sitting for his portrait, belaying pin in hand.] The next Monday the sailors supposed that we should begin of course to keep all hands in the afternoon, and when eight bells was struck at noon, they all opened their ears and looked out of the corners of their eyes at the mate, waiting for the expected and dreaded order, "All hands get dinner." But nothing was said, and the men kept on with their work, with their brains full of surmises as to what it meant. At one bell, when the watch came out, the mate mustered all hands at the main-hatch, and said to them: "Men, the captain says he's willing to give you watch and watch all the time, if you can get the work done. But this bark has got to be put in just as fine order as any ship that ever went into Boston harbor. Now we'll try you and see what you can do. But if the work lags, or there's any hanging back, I'll have you out." So we went to work with the watch, fitting the rigging, and tarring down. The men did as well as we could wish, things went on quietly, and the work disappeared day by day faster than we had expected. The crew presented a rather uncouth appearance on deck during this period, for one suit of clothes was devoted to serve through the tarring and then go overboard. The officers were not much more attractive in appearance, as the second mate's portrait will testify. It had a good moral effect to secure one day's cleanliness out of seven, the result of our system of services in the cabin on Sunday.