"If fish ain't meat, wot is it?" demanded Martin. "Is it wegetables, or wot?"
This always stumped Joe, but he stuck to his guns and came back stronger each time: "It's fish, that's wot it is, F-I-S-H—FISH!" his voice rising above everything else in the heat of argument.
The debate finally closed in a particularly violent session that continued as our side went aft to muster in the second dog watch.
"Fish you say!" shouted the mate at the unheard of disrespect on the part of Joe, who was frothing at the mouth in the defense of his contention. "I'll fish you, you thick-headed ass," and as Joe woke up to the fact that a new champion had come into the field, the whole watch broke into a laugh at the sequel. "Fish, is it? Well, I'll fish you good and proper. Get a pot of slush and rub down the mizzen topmast. Drop a spot, and you stay on deck tomorrow forenoon, you fisherman!" The last with biting sarcasm.
Joe lay aloft with his slush pot, and as a bright moon gave him plenty of light at his work, it also enabled the mate to watch him closely. However, this ended the argument, much to the satisfaction of all of us, for it was a bit wearing.
Jimmy Marshall had a large dog-eared Bible in his possession; a red stamp on the title page read as follows: "Property of Seamen's Bethel, Sydney. Do not take from chapel." While lying up with his arm in a sling, having been tossed between the spare main yard and the after bitts, by a sea, he delved industriously into the lore of the good book; and when he was back on deck again Jimmy refused to chantey to the tune of "Whiskey," and his verses, when singing a rope to "Molly Brown," were painfully proper.
Each night in the dog watch he insisted on reading from the Old Testament, starting at the very beginning. Jimmy had a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, and to further his missionary work, he changed bunks with Scouse, so that he could be directly under the lamp, while the big red-head moved into the best bunk in the fo'c'sle right next to an open port.
Jimmy worked his way through Genesis and got well started on Exodus by the time we picked up the S. E. trades. His pronunciation of the hard names was truly wonderful and required much careful wiping of his spectacles. By the time he was within hailing distance of Leviticus we were again approaching the doldrums and once more we unbent our storm canvas and shifted into the easy weather sails.
Australia, one of the most consistent chronologists of the fo'c'sle, working by the brad-hole-and-peg method, using the stumps of burnt matches, pegged a hole around which he had scratched a circle.
"The 'dead horse' is worked off," announced Australia, as we turned out for breakfast one morning, springing a surprise, as it had been more than a week since the subject was broached last in the fo'c'sle. March 5th, three months since leaving the wharf at South Street! It seemed a year in point of experiences.