It may have been the shell-back’s boast or Harry’s criticism which induced me, when on deck, to observe more closely that professional superiority which made the ‘bucco sailor’ so fearless. It seemed to me that though the ‘old hands’ knew their work well, they took precious care to do as little as possible; and, had anyone asked me, after I had got safely ashore, what I thought of them, I should have said that they did more ‘dusting round’ than real work. It is true the ‘old salts’ were loudest in their responses to the mate’s commands, that they led the bowline song and the halliard chant, were cheerier with their ‘Aye, ayes,’ ‘Belays,’ ‘Vast hauling,’ and chorus; that they strove whose hands should be uppermost at the halliards and nearest to the tackles; but all this did not impress me so much as they might think it did. When the officers thundered out, ‘All hands shorten sail,’ ‘Furl top-gallant sails,’ or ‘Reef topsail,’ the shell-backs appeared to delay under various shifty pretexts to climb up the rigging, in order that being last they might occupy the safe position at the bunt of the sails; and when it was only a four-man job, the way in which they noisily passed the word along, without offering to move, was most artful. At serving, splicing, and steering, the skill of the old hands counted greatly, no doubt; but in work aloft they were nowhere, compared to those Dutchmen and Norwegians they so much derided. They were, in fact, strategists in the arts of shirking. Sometimes the ‘sojering,’ as it was called, was a little too conspicuous; and then Bully Waters, with awful energy and frantic malice, drew blood from ‘old salt’ and ‘joskin’ indiscriminately, with iron belaying-pins, and kicked, and pounded, until I sickened at the sound of the deadly thuds, and the faces streaming with blood; but I was compelled to admit that for some days after there would be a more spontaneous briskness to obey orders, and old and young regarded the fiery mate from the corners of their eyes. Five days from Liverpool there suddenly appeared on deck three stowaways,--two Irish boys of about fourteen and fifteen, and an Irishman,--ragged, haggard, and spiritless from hunger, sickness, and confinement. Of course they had to undergo the ordeal of inspection by the stern captain, who contemptuously dismissed them as though they were too vile to look at; but Nelson chivied the three unfortunates from the poop to the bow to ‘warm their cockles,’ as he phrased it. The cries of the youngest boy were shrillest and loudest, but, when he afterwards emerged to beg food, we guessed by his roguish smile that he had been least hurt. Harry expressed his opinion that he was a ‘Liverpool rat,’ who would certainly end his days in the State’s prison.