"Yes, I don't care; let them go." So the boat is manned with a crew of Arethusas, myself among the number, and Mr. Grafton steers himself, not yet having arrived at the dignity of a body guard. It was nearly dark when we arrived alongside, and as soon as the boat was on the cranes and secured, all hands made a "grand forward movement" to supper, and I now had leisure to look about me, and to compare the vessel and her veteran looking crew with the Arethusa and my own shipmates. The forecastle of the Mandarin was small, dingy and dark, even in the daytime, having only two small decklights and no sidelights, a modern luxury which had not then come into general use. She had boasted a steerage in the early part of the voyage, but this had been broken up, and all hands quartered in the forecastle--sixteen men in twelve bunks, some of them turning in and out, watch and watch. An old battered blubber-room lamp hung from a beam overhead, and gave just sufficient light to make darkness visible. Two little ones, of the kind known as "petticoat lamps," were now added, and each furnished light enough to see that the other was burning. The old adage that "a farrier's mare and a cobbler's wife are always slipshod" is fully verified in the case of a whaleman's lamp; for those who supply the world with oil burn it in its crude state. There was room enough in the forecastle, small as it was; for not half the crew had chests, and their goods and chattels could be compressed into a very small compass. The supper was not exactly what would have tempted a gourmand; still it was all that could be expected on board a ship forty-four months from home. The cows must have gone astray, for the supply of milk had failed: _domestic_ coffee, compounded of burnt peas and corn, had usurped the place of the imported article; while it was evident that the visitors, if in time for supper, had come too late for _tea_. The bread was thickly colonized, and the salt junk better adapted for the manufacture of fancy carved work and articles of _virtu_ than for purposes of mastication. It was, of course, a point of honor with us green hands to overlook these little drawbacks, and even to affect an eccentric taste for the ancient viands; but our hosts were not at all backward in expressing their dissatisfaction with this state of things. This crew were mostly "beach-combers," men who had joined the ship during the voyage, many of them in the last port, and knew little and cared less about the history of the voyage previous to the time they shipped. They were full of tales of their adventures in other vessels from which they had deserted or been discharged, and of encounters with consuls, captains of the port, _vigilantes_, and other functionaries, commonly regarded as Jack's natural enemies; while those luckless shipmasters who had availed themselves of their services must have lived in perpetual jeopardy during the time they remained on board.