His hardest duty was supposed to be shinning up the
ratlin to "reef," or "brail up," or "splice the mainbrace," or do some
other of those mysterious things that caused him to look so mythical to
the minds of land-lubbers and the simple-hearted kind of women that used
to be, but now no longer are. His lighter hours (about eighteen out of
the twenty-four) were passed in terpsichorean performances on the
"fo'k'sl," and were so fascinating to the shorey mind that music was
specially composed for them, and the "Sailor's Hornpipe" is one of the
scourges inflicted upon mortals, for their sins, by barrel-organists at
the present day. Grog was dealt out to him by the gallon, and, as for
"backy," the light-hearted fellow was never allowed to suffer for want
of _that_; so that his happiness may be said to have been complete.
Things are sadly changed, now, with regard to poor JACK. Every day we
read of outrageous assaults upon him with marline-spikes and other
perverted marine stores, by brutal skippers and flagitious mates, whose
proper end would be the yard-arm and the rope's end. All belaying-pin
and no pay has made JACK a dull boy. His windpipe refuses to furnish the
whilom exhilarating tooraloo for his hornpipe.
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