Chapter 20

HOW THEY SLEEP IN A MAN-OF-WAR.

No more of my luckless jacket for a while; let me speak of my
hammock, and the tribulations I endured therefrom.

Give me plenty of room to swing it in; let me swing it between
two date-trees on an Arabian plain; or extend it diagonally from
Moorish pillar to pillar, in the open marble Court of the Lions
in Granada's Alhambra: let me swing it on a high bluff of the
Mississippi--one swing in the pure ether for every swing over the
green grass; or let me oscillate in it beneath the cool dome of
St. Peter's; or drop me in it, as in a balloon, from the zenith,
with the whole firmament to rock and expatiate in; and I would
not exchange my coarse canvas hammock for the grand state-bed,
like a stately coach-and-four, in which they tuck in a king when
he passes a night at Blenheim Castle.

When you have the requisite room, you always have "spreaders" in
your hammock; that is, two horizontal sticks, one at each end,
which serve to keep the sides apart, and create a wide vacancy
between, wherein you can turn over and over--lay on this side or
that; on your back, if you please; stretch out your legs; in short,
take your ease in your hammock; for of all inns, your bed is the best.

But when, with five hundred other hammocks, yours is crowded and
jammed on all sides, on a frigate berth-deck; the third from
above, when "_spreaders_" are prohibited by an express edict from
the Captain's cabin; and every man about you is jealously
watchful of the rights and privileges of his own proper hammock,
as settled by law and usage; _then_ your hammock is your Bastile
and canvas jug; into which, or out of which, it is very hard to
get; and where sleep is but a mockery and a name.

Eighteen inches a man is all they allow you; eighteen inches in
width; in _that_ you must swing. Dreadful! they give you more
swing than that at the gallows.

During warm nights in the Tropics, your hammock is as a stew-pan;
where you stew and stew, till you can almost hear yourself hiss.
Vain are all stratagems to widen your accommodations. Let them
catch you insinuating your boots or other articles in the head of
your hammock, by way of a "spreader." Near and far, the whole
rank and file of the row to which you belong feel the encroachment
in an instant, and are clamorous till the guilty one is found out,
and his pallet brought back to its bearings.

In platoons and squadrons, they all lie on a level; their hammock
_clews_ crossing and recrossing in all directions, so as to present
one vast field-bed, midway between the ceiling and the floor; which
are about five feet asunder.

One extremely warm night, during a calm, when it was so hot that