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Updated: June 9, 2025
Small cascades of water streamed from the pall bits from the fo'castle head above, and, joining issue with the streams from the wet oilskins, ran along the floor and disappeared aft into the main hold. At two bells in the middle watch that is, in land parlance one o'clock in the morning the order was roared out on the fo'castle: "All hands on deck and shorten sail!"
Half-past six was no longer half-past six to these pilgrims from New England, the South, and the Mississippi Valley, it was "seven bells"; eight, twelve, and four o'clock were "eight bells"; the captain did not take the longitude at nine o'clock, but at "two bells." They spoke glibly of the "after cabin," the "for'rard cabin," "port and starboard" and the "fo'castle."
It was among the tawdry shops of ship chandlers in the East Side, where he himself had gone in search of certain able seamen in the company of the sailing-master of the Isis. Von Ritz would hardly be consorting with the fo'castle men who frequent the water front below Brooklyn Bridge.
"And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you'd think he warn't worth a cent but to set around and look ornery and lay for a chance to steal something. But as soon as money was up on him he was a different dog; his under-jaw'd begin to stick out like the fo'castle of a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover and shine like the furnaces.
The Lively Nan was lying with her gaff hoisted half-way and the peak settled down, so that we mightn't lose any time in setting the sail in the morning; and Lawrence and I were lying in the fo'castle, with our pipes in our mouths, watching the shore, to see if the captain was coming off, and seeing the sun go down over the sand-hills and the steeples and the wind-mills of Yarmouth.
I am an old hand, and have many times sat in a fo'castle so full of smoke that one could scarce see one's hands, but you are not accustomed to it, and it may like enough make you sick." "There will be no harm in that, John, so that one does not push it too far. Now, how are you going to set about this sweating process?" "While you undress and get into bed I will get a blanket ready.
Not to say that I never stretched my yarn a little on the fo'castle in my younger days, like the rest of 'em; but what with living under roofs so long past, and a call from the parson regular in strawberry time, and having to do the flogging consequent on the inakkeracies of statement follering on the growing up of six boys, a man learns to trim his words a little, Tom, and no mistake.
The rest of the watch, some fifteen or twenty hands, followed suit, or even skulked back into the fo'castle, there to stretch themselves out on their chests and smoke. These things the captain connived at, and the men were only too glad of the relief to inquire too curiously into his reasons.
Aye, Jack, I will feel happier to be elsewhere when Cap'n Wellsby unbars the fo'castle and holds 'em back with his pistols till he can cast off in the jolly-boat." "Yes, the sight of you is apt to put them in a vile temper," laughingly agreed Jack, "and 'tis awkward for the master to bother with us. Now about a little raft " "Two short spars are enough. There they lie.
During my last voyage across the ocean, which was on the Dutch liner Rotterdam, I went into the fo'castle one day to talk to a stowaway, a simple young East Prussian lad, who had gone to sea and had found himself in the United States at the outbreak of war. I asked. "I was home-sick," he answered, "and I wanted to go back to Germany to see my mother. I got on board quite easily.
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