I cannot say that the position of mate carried with it anything more joyful than that there were no more dishes to wash.

I was ignorant of the simplest duties of mate, and would have fared badly indeed, had the sailors not sympathized with me.

I knew nothing of the minutiae of ropes and rigging, of the trimming and setting of sails; but the sailors took pains to put me to rights,--Louis proving an especially good teacher,--and I had little trouble with those under me.
With the hunters it was otherwise.

Familiar in varying degree with the sea, they took me as a sort of joke.

In truth, it was a joke to me, that I, the veriest landsman, should be filling the office of mate; but to be taken as a joke by others was a different matter.