It is one of a sailor's few luxuries and privileges, and acts as safety-valve for heats of just and unjust indignation, which might otherwise come to dangerous explosion.

We three had really learned no mean amount of rough-and-ready seamanship by this time, and we had certainly practised the art of grumbling as well.

That "of all the dirty ill-found tubs," the _Slut_ was the worst we had ever known, our limited experience had made us safe in declaring, and we had also been voluble about the undue length of time during which we had been "humbugging about" between Halifax and New York.

But these by-gones we now willingly allowed to be by-gones, especially as we had had duff-pudding the day before, though it was not Sunday--( Oh, Crayshaw's! that I should have lived to find duff-pudding a treat--but it _is_ a pleasant change from salt meat),--and as the captain had promised some repairs to the ship before we returned to Halifax.
We were not long in discovering that the promise was a safe one, for he did not mean to return to Halifax at all.

Gradually it leaked out, that when the salt fish was disposed of we were not going to take in ballast and go back, as we had thought, but to stow away a "general cargo" of cheap manufactured articles (chiefly hardware, toys, trumpery pictures, and looking-glasses) and proceed with them on a trading voyage "down south."-- "West Indies," said the carpenter.