Jim spreads his dirty clothes on the board and scrubs them with a brush and soap and his steam-heated water. Seamen do a lot of washing. They like to keep their clothes clean. Often they do their own mending, too. [Illustration] While Jim’s clothes dry on a regular clothesline on the afterdeck, he gets out his ditty bag which holds all kinds of odds and ends, including needles and thread and a sailor’s palm. The palm is what a sailor uses instead of a thimble for pushing a big needle through heavy canvas. In the old days when ships had sails to be mended, these palms were very necessary, but nowadays most sailors only use them the way Jim does. He is making a sea bag to take the place of his old one that has worn out. The sea bag is his trunk. He carries it on his shoulder whenever he changes ships. [Illustration] While Jim sews, he sings, and other seamen who are off watch sing too. One of them plays a banjo, and another has a harmonica. Some of the songs are the ones you hear any day on the radio, and others are songs that seamen themselves have made up. These sailor songs are called chanteys--pronounced shantys. On old sailing vessels men sang them as they worked together, and the rhythm of their work set the rhythm of the music. Here is a chantey that helped them pull together on the rope that lifted a sail: Way! Haul away! We’ll haul away the bowline. Way! Haul away! We’ll haul away, Joe. In those days, before there were engines to do work, men used a hand-turned machine called a capstan to raise the anchor or tighten heavy lines. They turned it round and round by pushing against long bars called capstan bars. As they pushed, they sang: Yo, heave ho! Round the capstan go. Heave, men, with a will. Tramp, and stamp it still! The anchor must be weighed, the anchor must be weighed. Yo-ho! Heave ho! Yo-ho! Heave ho! Now, while the singing goes on, Jim takes his turn at having a haircut. For a barber’s chair he uses a bitt. That’s a round piece of steel that sticks up out of the deck at just the right height. It’s used at times for holding big ropes that seamen call hawsers. The barber is a man from the black gang. That means he works in the engine room. When he is off watch, he likes to make a little extra money cutting hair. So he puts a sheet around Jim and starts to work. Chiquita, the ship’s cat, takes a playful swipe at a dangling corner of the sheet, and then goes off in search of a rat that may have come aboard in port. [Illustration] The barber has pictures tattooed on his forearms, and Jim laughs as he watches them. On one arm is a picture of an old sailing ship. As the barber’s muscles move, they make the ship look as if wind is blowing on the sails. On the other arm is a beautiful lady chasing butterflies. When the barber opens and closes the scissors, the lady looks as if she is dancing after the butterflies.