A glare of light comes down the hatchways. Away from the
hatchways a few battle-lanterns are hung, to keep up some
pretence of light in the darkest corners. At one end of this long
narrow room in La Reina a wooden partition, running right across
from side to side, made a biggish chamber called "the cabin,"
where the officers took their meals. A little further along the
room, one on each side of it, were two tiny partitioned cabins,
about seven feet square, in which the officers slept, two in each
cabin one above the other, in shelf-beds, or bunks. My hammock
had been slung between these cabins, a little forward of them.
When I turned out, I saw that the rest of the 'tweendecks was
piled with stores of all kinds, lashed down firmly to ringbolts.
Right forward, in the darkness of the ship's bows, I saw other
hammocks where the sailors slept.
I was wondering what I was to do about washing, when the rough
man who had called me a few minutes before came down to ask me
why I was not up on deck. I said that I was wondering where I
could wash myself.
"Wash yourself," he said. "You haven't made yourself dirty yet.
You don't wash at sea till your work's done for the day. Why,
haven't you lashed your hammock yet?"
"Please, sir," I said, "I don't know how."
"Well, for once," he said, "I'll show you how. Tomorrow you'll do
it for yourself."
"There," he said, when he had lashed up the hammock, by what
seemed to me to be art-magic, "don't you say you don't know how
to lash a 'ammick.
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