Little things assume monstrous proportions after a group of men have been in close quarters for a long time. This is particularly so when they have to live in such intimate and trying proximity as that in the fo'c'sle of a sailing ship. On a deepwaterman, months at sea without even a smell of land, let alone a sight of it, the community life is bound to wear thin the edges of daily intercourse. Every small incident is magnified far beyond its worth, and only a trifle is needed to start a racket of some kind. Brenden and Frenchy cursed the luckless Joe for a clumsy lout. Jimmy called him a "bloody rum cat," a favorite expression of the little sailor, and Scouse, foaming with rage, was only restrained by the rest of us from sailing right into Joe, regardless of the cracker hash, the remaining tea, or anything else. Joe was equally furious. He refused to touch the tea, saying he had spilled his whack, and the rest of us might shut up our talk about it. At this Australia and Fred insisted that Joe have his tea, sharing with the rest. Talk became loud, and in the midst of the whole affair eight bells struck and we tumbled on deck, our dinner half finished. Scouse and Joe went to their work in the main rigging; some were to leeward of the deckhouse stitching sails, while I passed a ball of marline for Frenchy, who was serving the wire bolt rope of the foot of an old lower tops'l that we were repairing. He was facing aft toward the main shrouds, when suddenly he started, his eyes seemed to bulge from his head, and he dropped his serving mallet, while at the same time there was a bump behind me on the deck, and Frenchy gasped, "_Ma foi!_ Look, Felix!" I turned quickly and there on the white deck below the main rigging was a big black greasy splotch of tar, and Joe's tar pot rolling into the scupper. The silence that followed was painful. Mr. Zerk came forward from the weather quarterbitt where he was smoking his after dinner pipe, and Joe dropped down the Jacob's ladder to the deck under a fire of insulting profanity from the mate. Whipping off his dungaree jacket, he started to swab up the defiling tar before it could soak well into the deck planks. Scouse, whom Frenchy saw unhitch the lanyard of the pot as he worked above Joe, went on with his tarring without batting an eye. Trouble was on foot, however, in the port watch. We went below at eight bells, four o'clock in the afternoon, but Joe remained on deck to remove the last vestiges of tar, and Scouse entered the fo'c'sle, speaking to no one. The trick played on Joe was so contemptible that, so far as the common feeling went, Scouse had placed himself beyond the pale, and no man cared to break the ice by addressing him. That big Scouse felt this was certain, and the fact that it hurt at least attested a few remaining embers of decent feeling.