Chapter 42

KILLLNG TIME IN A MAN-OF-WAR IN HARBOUR.

Reading was by no means the only method adopted by my shipmates
in whiling away the long, tedious hours in harbour. In truth,
many of them could not have read, had they wanted to ever so
much; in early youth their primers had been sadly neglected.
Still, they had other pursuits; some were experts at the needle,
and employed their time in making elaborate shirts, stitching
picturesque eagles, and anchors, and all the stars of the
federated states in the collars thereof; so that when they at
last completed and put on these shirts, they may be said to have
hoisted the American colors.

Others excelled in _tattooing_ or _pricking_, as it is called in
a man-of-war. Of these prickers, two had long been celebrated, in
their way, as consummate masters of the art. Each had a small box
full of tools and colouring matter; and they charged so high for
their services, that at the end of the cruise they were supposed
to have cleared upward of four hundred dollars. They would
_prick_ you to order a palm-tree, or an anchor, a crucifix, a
lady, a lion, an eagle, or anything else you might want.

The Roman Catholic sailors on board had at least the crucifix
pricked on their arms, and for this reason: If they chanced to
die in a Catholic land, they would be sure of a decent burial in
consecrated ground, as the priest would be sure to observe the
symbol of Mother Church on their persons. They would not fare as
Protestant sailors dying in Callao, who are shoved under the
sands of St. Lorenzo, a solitary, volcanic island in the harbour,
overrun with rep-tiles, their heretical bodies not being
permitted to repose in the more genial loam of Lima.

And many sailors not Catholics were anxious to have the crucifix
painted on them, owing to a curious superstition of theirs. They
affirm--some of them--that if you have that mark tattooed upon all
four limbs, you might fall overboard among seven hundred and
seventy-five thousand white sharks, all dinnerless, and not one
of them would so much as dare to smell at your little finger.

We had one fore-top-man on board, who, during the entire cruise,
was having an endless cable _pricked_ round and round his waist,
so that, when his frock was off, he looked like a capstan with a
hawser coiled round about it. This fore-top-man paid eighteen
pence per link for the cable, besides being on the smart the
whole cruise, suffering the effects of his repeated puncturings;
so he paid very dear for his cable.

One other mode of passing time while in port was cleaning and
polishing your _bright-work_; for it must be known that, in men-
of-war, every sailor has some brass or steel of one kind or other
to keep in high