didn’t that dough-boy, the steward, tell me that of a morning he always finds the old man’s hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down at the foot, and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort of frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on it? a hot old man! i guess he’s got what some folks ashore call a conscience; it’s a kind of tic-dolly-row they say—worse nor a toothache. well, well; i don’t know what it is, but the lord keep me from catching it. he’s full of riddles; i wonder what he goes into the after hold for, every night, as dough-boy tells me he suspects; what’s that for, i should like to know? who’s made appointments with him in the hold? ain’t that queer, now? but there’s no telling, it’s the old game—here goes for a snooze. damn me, it’s worth a fellow’s while to be born into the world, if only to fall right asleep. and now that i think of it, that’s about the first thing babies do, and that’s a sort of queer, too. damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of ’em.