CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
ON OUR BEAM-ENDS.
Up to now, although we had experienced bad weather for two days and the special gale before which we were driving had lasted some eighteen hours at a stretch, no serious accident had happened on board, the _Josephine_ being as sound and staunch in every way as when she left port, with the exception of losing her mainsail and having her rigging, perhaps, rather tautly stretched.
The galley fire had been put out once or twice by the heavy seas which we took in over the bows, but Cuffee, with the cordial co-operation of his brother darkey, Jake, was easily able to light this again; and the men, having their rations regularly and little or no work to do--save taking their trick at the wheel, when four would have to go on duty together at once--had nothing to grumble at.

Everything, indeed, proceeded comfortably enough while the ship was scudding first one way and then the other--"doing diagonals," as it were, across her latitudes! Down below in the cabin all had been what sailor's term "a hurrah's nest" ever since the gale began, the loose water knocking about the decks having washed all sorts of odds and ends together and kept us always wet; while the rolling of the vessel from side to side, like a pendulum, as she ran before the wind had smashed most of the crockery- ware and glasses in the steward's pantry, besides causing the benches round the saloon table and the chairs to fetch away from their lashings.
For days past, our meals had resembled amateur picnics more than anything else--whenever we were able to get them, that is, the old regularity of breakfast and lunch and dinner being completely abolished; for the captain and Mr Marline and myself had to take odd snacks and stray bites at various hours whenever opportunity and appetite allowed their indulgence.
Harry, the steward, was at his wit's end to get things in proper keeping.
No sooner had he cleared up one batch of breakages and made matters ship-shape than over would sway the _Josephine_ hard to port; when, bang would go something else, undoing in one instant the work of hours of labour in putting the place below in order.
"Lor' a mussy, me nebber get tings right nohow!" he would exclaim, setting to work again; and then, a sea would come floating in over the combings of the cabin bulkhead, tumbling him over and washing him aft amidst the debris, almost drowning the man before he could fish himself up again and set to his task anew.

His toil, like that of Sisyphus, was ever being renewed when on the verge of completion.
To me, however, all these little disagreeables seemed immensely jolly; so, whenever the captain or Mr Marline or Harry happened to get capsized in this way down in the cabin during the day, it sent me at once into fits of merriment, the fact of my being washed off my feet as well only adding to the enjoyment of the joke, for I could grin quite as much with my own head in the scuppers and my mouth full of water as I would when the others were similarly situated.
"Bless the boy!" Captain Miles said.

"He's a regular sailor.

He laughs at everything." And so I did; especially one afternoon, when a sea coming in suddenly so jammed Mr Marline inside an arm-chair, whose seat had given way, that the watch had to be called below to extricate him.