To see the men who had been accustomed to a life of luxury toiling away with rope and scrubbing brush and paint pot, working like day laborers, and happy at that, was really a remarkable spectacle.

For my part, I noticed with surprise that scratched and bruised hands--scratched so that the salt water caused positive pain--did not appeal to me.

I tore off a corner of my right thumb trying to squeeze a large box through the forward hatch, and the only treatment I gave it was a fragment of rather soiled rag and a little vaseline borrowed from a mate.

To quit work and apply for the first aid to injured never struck me.

Ashore I would probably have called a doctor.
The day before we left the yard one of my mates sprained his back lifting a box of canned meat.