"Pleasure's all very well ashore, where a man
may go his own way a long time, and show his nasty temper at home, and
there's other folks about him doing double duty to make up for it and
keep things together; but when you come to a handful of men cast adrift
to make a world for themselves, as one may say, Lord bless you! there's
nothing's any good then but making every man do as he's bid and be
content with what he gets--and clearing him out if he won't. It was a
hard winter at that. But regularity pulled us through. Reg'lar work,
reg'lar ways, reg'lar rations and reg'lar lime-juice, as long as it
lasted. And not half a bad Christmas we didn't have neither, and poor
Sal's Christmas-tree was the best part of it. 'What sort of a
Christmas-tree, and why Sal's?' Well, the carpenter put it up, and an
uncommon neat thing he made too, of pinewood and birch-broom, and some
of the men hung it over with paper chains. And then the carpenter opened
the bundle Sal made him take his oath he wouldn't open till Christmas,
whatever came, and I'm blest if there wasn't a pair of brand-new socks
for every soul of the ship's crew.
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