thing that the other officers do not feel inclined to, and therefore rarely has time to wash. He in course of time becomes second officer, and the slave of the hatch. During this period of his metamorphosis he feels no compunction whatever in hauling out and dumping on the deck burst bacon barrels or leaking lime casks, actions which, when he reaches the next stage of development, he will regard as undistinguishable in a moral point of view from a compound commission of the seven deadly sins. For the deck, be it known, is to the First officer the most important thing in the cosmogony,and there is probably nothing he would not sacrifice to its complexion. One that I had the pleasure of knowing once lamented to me that he was not allowed by his then owners to spread a layer of ripe pineapples upon his precious idol, and let them be well trampled in and then lie a few hours, for this he assured me gave a most satisfactory bloom to a deck's complexion. Yet when this same man becomes a captain and grows another stripe round his cuffs, he no longer takes an active part in the ship's household affairs, that is his First officer's business, the ship's husband's affair; and should he have an inefficient First the captain expects Men and Nations to sympathise with him, just as a lady expects to be sympathised with over a bad housemaid.
There are, however, two habits which are constant to all the species through each stage of transformation from roust-about to captain. One is a love of painting. I have never known an officer or captain who could pass a paint-pot, with the brush sticking temptingly out, without emotion. While, as for Jack, the happiest hours he knows seemingly are those he spends sitting on a slung plank over the side of his ocean home, with his bare feet dangling a few feet above
