It is 5:30 or 6 o’clock. The morning light has come. The cry of “Turn to!” is heard. That is, “turn to” to wash down decks, an operation which will tax the already exhausted resources of an empty stomach until breakfast time at 8 o’clock. The mates have their fragrant “cabin coffee” and biscuit served them on the brass capstan aft; we can smell its aroma, but nothing warm can get into our stomachs for over two long hours of work. The basic idea in this regular washing down decks at sea seems to be that of keeping men busy for the sake of keeping them busy. The top of every deck plank must be scrubbed with a care and scrutiny befitting the labors of a diamond polisher on his gems, while the under side may be dripping with foulness, as it sometimes is. I had the post of honor in scrubbing the quarter-deck. That was the drawing of water in a canvas bucket from the mizzen chains to wash over that deck. The remaining five boys would push wearily about with their brooms, hand-brushes, squabs, and squilgees, superintended by our extraordinary fourth mate (always to me an object of interest, from the fact of the secret carefully hoarded in my breast that I had pulled him into the New York dock), who, with a microscopic eye inspected each crack and seam after the boys’ labors, in search of atomic particles of dirt, and called them back with all the dignity of command, and a small amount of commanding personality behind it, whenever he deemed he had discovered any. When this labor was finished I was generally so exhausted as to have no appetite for breakfast. But a sailor’s stomach is not presumed to be at all sensitive under any conditions. And above all a “boy”--a boy belonging to a squad of boys who about once a day were encouraged and enthused to exertion and maritime ambition by the assurance conveyed them by one of the mates that they weren’t “worth their salt”--what business had a boy’s stomach to put on airs at sea? Most landsmen if called up at 4 o’clock on a muggy morning and worked like mules for a couple of hours on a digestive vacuum, would probably at the breakfast hour feel more the need of food than the appetite to partake of it. Though I followed the sea nearly two years, I am no sailor. The net result of my maritime experience is a capacity for tying a bow-line or a square knot and a positive knowledge and conviction concerning which end of the ship goes first. I also know enough not throw hot ashes to windward.