As soon as we had crawled on deck I used to take a round turn
with a rope about the men, the pumps, and the mainmast, and we turned,
we turned incessantly, with the water to our waists, to our necks, over
our heads. It was all one. We had forgotten how it felt to be dry.
"And there was somewhere in me the thought: By Jove! this is the deuce
of an adventure--something you read about; and it is my first voyage as
second mate--and I am only twenty--and here I am lasting it out as well
as any of these men, and keeping my chaps up to the mark. I was pleased.
I would not have given up the experience for worlds. I had moments of
exultation. Whenever the old dismantled craft pitched heavily with her
counter high in the air, she seemed to me to throw up, like an appeal,
like a defiance, like a cry to the clouds without mercy, the words
written on her stern: '_Judea_, London. Do or Die.'
"O youth! The strength of it, the faith of it, the imagination of it! To
me she was not an old rattle-trap carting about the world a lot of coal
for a freight--to me she was the endeavour, the test, the trial of life.
I think of her with pleasure, with affection, with regret--as you would
think of someone dead you have loved. I shall never forget her. . . .
Pass the bottle.
"One night when tied to the mast, as I explained, we were pumping
on, deafened with the wind, and without spirit enough in us to wish
ourselves dead, a heavy sea crashed aboard and swept clean over us.
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