Really, I quite astonished Tom by climbing up the futtock shrouds outside the top, instead of going through "the lubber's hole," showing myself, thanks to Tim Rooney's private instructions previously, much more nimble in casting off the gaskets and loosening the bunt of the sail than my brother mid expected; indeed, I got off the yard, after the job was done, and down to the deck a good half minute in advance of him.
On our sixth day out, we reached latitude 35 degrees north and 17 degrees west, drifting past Madeira a couple of days later, the temperature of the air gradually rising and the western winds growing correspondingly slack as we made more southing; until, although it was barely a week since we had been experiencing the bitter weather of our English February, we now seemed to be suddenly transported into the balminess of June.

The change, however, took place so imperceptibly during our gradual progress onward to warmer latitudes, that, in looking back all at once, it seemed almost incredible.
I found the work which we apprentices had to do was really very similar to that of the hands forward, Tom Jerrold and I in the port watch, and Weeks and Matthews--who, although styled "third mate," had still to go aloft and do the same sort of duties as all the rest of us--in the starboard watch under the second mate, having to attend to everything connected with the setting and taking in of sail on the mizzen-mast, as well as having to keep the ship's time, one of us striking the bell every half-hour throughout our spell on deck.
After the first few days at sea, too, I came to the conclusion that if our work was like that of the sailors our food was not one whit the better; albeit, one of the stipulations in the contract when my father paid the premium demanded by the owners of the ship for me as a "first- class apprentice," was that I should mess aft in the cabin.
I certainly did so, like Tom Jerrold and the two others; but all that either they or I had of cabin fare throughout the entire voyage was an occasional piece of "plum duff" and jam on Sundays--on which day, by the way, we had no work to do save attending to the sails and washing decks in the morning; while, in the afternoon, Captain Gillespie read prayers on the poop, his congregation being mainly limited to ourselves and the watch on deck, the crew spending their holiday, on this holy day, in mending their clothes in the forecastle.
Yes, our rations were the same as those of the ordinary hands; namely, salt junk and "hard tack," varied by pea-soup and sea-pie occasionally for dinner, with rice and molasses as a treat on Saturdays.

Our breakfast and tea consisted of a straw-coloured decoction known on board-ship as "water bewitched," accompanied by such modicums of our dinner allowance as we were able to save conscientiously with our appetites.

This amounted to very little as a rule, for, being at sea makes one fearfully hungry at all hours, and, fortunately, seems to endow one, also, with the capacity for eating anything! Really, if it had not been by currying favour with Ching Wang and bribing the steward, Pedro Carvalho, between whom there were continual rows occurring about the provisions, which it was the duty of the Portuguese to serve out, we must have starved ere reaching the Equator; for Captain Gillespie, in order to "turn an honest penny" and make his Dundee venture prove a success, persuaded the men forward and ourselves to give up a pound and a quarter of our meat ration for a pound tin of his marmalade, which he assured us would not only be more palatable with our biscuit, being such "a splendid substitute for butter," as the advertisements on the labels say, but would also act as an antiscorbutic to prevent the spread of scurvy amongst us--it being, as he declared, better than lime-juice for this purpose! The hands consented to this arrangement at first as a welcome change; but, when they presently found themselves mulcted of their salt junk, they grumbled much at Old Jock for holding us all to the bargain, and he and his marmalade became a by-word in the ship.

I did not wonder at all, after a bit, that Pedro the steward got into the habit of venting his wrath when vexed by kicking the empty tins about! I cannot say, however, that I disliked my new life, in spite of these drawbacks in the way of insufficiency of food and constancy of appetite, throughout which Ching Wang remained my staunch friend, bringing me many a savoury little delicacy for supper when it was my night watch on deck.
These tit-bits in the "grub" line I conscientiously shared with Tom Jerrold, who received similar favours from the steward, with whom he was a firm favourite, the only one, indeed, to whom the Portuguese appeared to take kindly on board.
No, on the contrary, the charm of being a sailor grew more and more upon me each day as the marvels of the deep became unfolded to me, and the better I became acquainted with the ship and my companions.
All was endless variety--the sky, the sea, and our surroundings changing apparently every moment and ever revealing something fresh and novel.
It did not seem real but a dream.
Could that be the Madeira I had read about in the distance, and that the Bay of Funchal of which I had seen pictures in books; and that the little nautilus or "Portuguese man-of-war" floating by the side of the vessel, now almost becalmed, with its cigar-shaped shell boat and pink membraneous sail all glowing with prismatic colouring?
Was it an actuality that I saw all these things with my own eyes; or, was I dreaming?
Was it really I, Allan Graham, standing there on the deck of the good ship Silver Queen, or somebody else?
An order from the captain, who came up from his cabin just then and caught me mooning, to go forward and "make it eight bells," stopped my reflections at this interesting point; and the next moment I was more interested in a most appetising odour of lobscouse emanating from Ching Wang's galley than in poetical dreams of Atlantic isles and ocean wonders! On passing Madeira, we soon got out of the Horse Latitudes, a soft breeze springing up from the west again towards evening, which wafted us down to the Canaries within the next two days.