I commenced a deliberate system of time-killing, which united some profit with a cheering up of the heavy hours.  As soon as I came on deck, and took my place and regular walk, I began with repeating over to myself in regular order a string of matters which I had in my memory,—­ the multiplication table and the tables of weights and measures; the Kanaka numerals; then the States of the Union, with their capitals; the counties of England, with their shire towns, and the kings of England in their order, and other things.  This carried me through my facts, and, being repeated deliberately, with long intervals, often eked out the first two bells.  Then came the Ten Commandments, the thirty-ninth chapter of Job, and a few other passages from Scripture.  The next in the order, which I seldom varied from, came Cowper’s Castaway, which was a great favorite with me; its solemn measure and gloomy character, as well as the incident it was founded upon, making it well suited to a lonely watch at sea.  Then his lines to Mary, his address to the Jackdaw, and a short extract from Table Talk (I abounded in Cowper, for I happened to have a volume of his poems in my chest); ``Ille et nefasto’’ from Horace, and Goethe’s Erl Konig.  After I had got through these, I allowed myself a more general range among everything that I could remember, both in prose and verse.  In this way, with an occasional break by relieving the wheel, heaving the log, and going to the scuttle-butt for a drink of water, the longest watch was passed away; and I was so regular in my silent recitations that, if there was no interruption by ship’s duty, I could tell very nearly the number of bells by my progress.

Our watches below were no more varied than the watch on deck.  All washing, sewing, and reading was given up, and we did nothing but eat, sleep, and stand our watch, leading what might be called a Cape Horn life.  The forecastle was too uncomfortable to sit up in; and whenever we were below, we were in our berths.  To prevent the rain and the sea-water which broke over the bows from washing down, we were obliged to keep the scuttle closed, so that the forecastle was nearly air-tight.  In this little, wet, leaky hole, we were all quartered, in an atmosphere so bad that our lamp, which swung in the middle from the beams, sometimes actually burned blue, with a large circle of foul air about it.  Still, I was never in better health than after three weeks of this life.  I gained a great deal of flesh, and we all ate like horses.  At every watch when we came below, before turning in, the bread barge and beef kid were overhauled.  Each man drank his quart of hot tea night and morning, and glad enough we were to get it; for no nectar and ambrosia were sweeter to the lazy immortals than was a pot of hot tea, a hard biscuit, and a slice of cold salt beef to us after a watch on deck.  To be sure, we were mere animals, and, had this life lasted a year instead of a month, we should have been little better than the ropes in the ship.  Not a razor, nor a brush, nor a drop of water, except the rain and the spray, had come near us all the time; for we were on an allowance of fresh water; and who would strip and wash himself in salt water on deck, in the snow and ice, with the thermometer at zero?