Jack is a child at the best of times and at the worst, and he takes his pleasures with the zest of a boy of seven, laughing and making merry until he falls to the deck from very weariness. And woe be at these merry times to the shipmate who has no sense of humor. His day is a hideous one, for he is hazed and bullied until he is forced in self-defence to seek the seclusion granted by the nethermost part of the hold. A practical joker always, when discipline is lax, Jack’s boisterous humor knows no restraint. The ceremony of “crossing the line,” the boarding of the ship by Neptune and his court, seems almost as old as ships, and is honored even to-day, when much of the romantic seems to have passed out of sea-life. It is the time when the deep-sea sailor has the better of his cousin of the coasts. Every man who crossed the equator for the first time had to pay due honor to the god of the seas. They exacted it, too, among the whalers when they crossed the Arctic Circle. [Illustration: NEPTUNE COMES ABOARD] The wardroom usually bought off in rum, money, or tobacco, but forward it was the roughest kind of rough man-handling; and the victims were happy indeed when they got their deep-water credentials. The details of procedure in this remarkable rite differed somewhat on different ships, but the essential elements of play and torture were the same in all cases. The day before the line was to be reached both wardroom and forecastle would receive a manifesto setting forth the intention of the god of the seas to honor their poor craft and ordering all those who had not paid tribute to him to gather forward to greet him as he came over the side. At the hour appointed there was a commotion forward, and a figure, wearing a pasteboard crown that surmounted a genial red face adorned with oakum whiskers, made its appearance over the windward nettings and proclaimed its identity as Neptune. Behind him was a motley crew in costumes of any kind and all kinds--or no kind--who had girded itself for this ungentle art of bull-baiting. The deep-water men intended to have an ample return for what they themselves had suffered, not many years back, when they had rounded the Horn or Cape of Good Hope. The unfortunates, stripped to the waist, were brought forward, one by one, to be put through their paces. After a mock trial by the jury of buffoons, the king ordered their punishment meted out in doses proportioned directly to the popularity of the victims as shipmates. The old long boat, with thwarts removed and a canvas lining, served as a ducking-pond. After vigorous applications, of “slush,”--which is another name for ship’s grease,--or perhaps a toss in a hammock or a blanket, they were pitched backward into the pool and given a thorough sousing, emerging somewhat the worse for wear, but happy that the business was finally done for good and all.