The vessel was an agreeable surprise. Dick had never seen her before, and as she was a freighter he rather expected to find her a dirty, old tub with tar on her decks. But she was neat as a pin, a strong iron ship of about two thousand five hundred tons, high forward and aft and low amidships, with the coziest of cabins aft, fitted with substantial mahogany furniture, and a little fireplace for use in cold climates. “Make yourself at home in the stateroom,” said Captain Godfree, a jolly little Englishman from Plymouth. “You’re to sleep in my bunk and I take the broad sofa. I must be on the bridge till we’re out of the harbor, but you’ll find your baggage all in there.” “Well, if this is a freighter, give me a freighter to travel in every time,” Dick said to himself as he entered the captain’s stateroom. “Why, it’s as big as any four staterooms I ever saw, and here’s a regular library in the bookcase. And here’s the chronometer; and drawers under the bunk that I’m to sleep in, and everything fitted up in grand style with mahogany and marble. I’d no idea they made these freighters so comfortable. Now this will be a real voyage; more like the voyages I’ve read about. The passenger steamers are too much like hotels to suit me.” Dick was soon on the bridge with the captain and pilot and supercargo, watching once more the receding shores of New York harbor. He was not familiar enough with the ship yet to notice that the two mates were doing nearly all the work on deck, and that only one or two seamen were in sight. When the vessel was well outside of Sandy Hook the pilot was taken off in his boat, and Captain Godfree took command. “Come and take the bridge, Mr. Turner!” he called to the second mate. “Now, then, Mr. Gran,” he said to the big first mate, who was on deck just below the bridge, “we’ll go and stir up those lubbers in the foc’s’le.” “They’re full of bad whiskey, nearly every man before the mast,” Captain Godfree exclaimed, turning to Dick. “Carried on board dead, some of them. It’s always so every time we start out; and it’s not as much their fault, the poor duffers, as it’s the fault of the wretched shipping system in New York. We’ll soon straighten them out, anyway. Come along, Mr. Gran.” The captain and first mate went up forward and threw open the iron doors of the forecastle, which was flush with the deck. One or two limp men half-crawled and half-fell out when the first door was opened. “Stand up here, you drunken scoundrels!” the two officers shouted; and each seized his man by the collar and raised him to his feet, shaking him soundly.