. Master Rockafellar's voyage . bies, who cried incessantly. I looked into the hatch ; it seemed very darkbeneath, and a close, most unpleasant, but quiteindescribable smell rose up through it—a sort ofatmosphere of onions, yellow soap, fumes of lamp-oil, the whole tinctured with a peculiar flavourof shipboard. A short flight of perpendicularsteps fell to the bottom. I was too manly to askmy way of the women ; so, perceiving a sailorcoiling away a rope upon a pin near the main-shrouds, I went up to him, and said, I want mybedroom ; dye know where it is ? He turned his eyes slowly on me, took a
. Master Rockafellar's voyage . bies, who cried incessantly. I looked into the hatch ; it seemed very darkbeneath, and a close, most unpleasant, but quiteindescribable smell rose up through it—a sort ofatmosphere of onions, yellow soap, fumes of lamp-oil, the whole tinctured with a peculiar flavourof shipboard. A short flight of perpendicularsteps fell to the bottom. I was too manly to askmy way of the women ; so, perceiving a sailorcoiling away a rope upon a pin near the main-shrouds, I went up to him, and said, I want mybedroom ; dye know where it is ? He turned his eyes slowly on me, took a some-what sneering survey of my buttons, spat a mouth-ful of tobacco-juice into a scupper-hole, and thensaid, whilst he proceeded with his work, Betterask the captn. The sailor was too grumpy and surly a man fora little boy like me to address a second time; so I 22 MASTER IWCKAFELLARS VOYAGE. made my way to the hatch, and put my leg overinto it, concluding that I should find somebody totell me where my bedroom was when 1 had. HE TURNED HIS EYES SLOWLY UPON ME. descended. The ladder was perpendicular, and Iwas very slow in stepping down it. Now then 1 bawled a powerful voice : up ordown ; one ways or tother. There aint too much HIS FIRST DA Y ON BOARD SHIP. 23 light here; and whos bin and made you thinkyoure made o sheet glass ? This remark, I found, was uttered by a seafaringman, one of the sailors of the ship, I afterwardscame to know, who had been told off to help ourhandful of emigrants to secure their boxes. I thinkhe was slightly in liquor; at all events, I grewsensible of a distinct taste of rum-and-water onthe air as I jumped backwards on to the lowerdeck close beside him. Where is my bedroom V said bedrooms at sea, young un, he answered. What callins yourn ? Are ee a sailor man ? Myprecious eyes! theres buttons! See here, mylively : when the shanks of them buttons is wornoff, Ill give ye the value of a fardenswuth of silverspoons for the whole boiling of em. I p
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1913
