Sukey came forward and tried to explain matters, but only made them worse.  The result was that all three were in a short hour transported to the Macedonian in irons.  Protest was useless; the Macedonian was short of hands and they were forced to go.

They were not even permitted to write letters home.  However, the skipper had their names, and the whole affair was printed in the Baltimore Sun, and copies were sent to the parents of the young men.

Captain Snipes of the English frigate was one of those barbarous, tyrannical sea captains, more brute than human, and, in an age when the strict discipline of the navy permitted tyranny to exist, he became a monster.

The three recruits were added to his muster-roll and gradually initiated into the mysteries of sailor’s life on a war vessel.

Poor Sukey for several days was fearfully seasick; but he recovered and was assigned to his mess.  Fortunately they were all three assigned to the same mess.  The common seamen of the Macedonian were divided into thirty-seven messes, put down on the purser’s book as Mess No. 1, Mess No. 2, Mess No. 3.  The members of each mess clubbed their rations of provisions, and breakfasted, dined and supped together at allotted intervals between the guns on the main deck.

They found that living on board the Macedonian was like living in a market, where one dresses on the door-step and sleeps in the cellar.  They could have no privacy, hardly a moment seclusion.  In fact, it was almost a physical impossibility ever to be alone.  The three impressed Americans dined at a vast table d’hôte, slept in commons and made their toilet when and where they could.  Their clothes were stowed in a large canvas bag, painted black, which they could get out of the “rack” only once in twenty-four hours, and then during a time of utmost confusion, among three hundred and fifty other sailors, each diving into his bag, in the midst of the twilight of the berth-deck.

Terrence, in order to obviate in a measure this inconvenience, suggested that they divide their wardrobes between their hammocks and their bags, stowing their few frocks and trowsers in the former, so that they could change at night when the hammocks were piped down.  They knew not whither they were bound, and they cared little about the object of the voyage.

“How are we to get out of this any way?” asked Sukey one day, when the three were together for a moment.

“Lave it all to me!” said Terrence.

“I am perfectly willing to leave it all to you, Terrence.  Do just as you will, so you get me on shore.”

Before they had been a month on the ship, they chased a French merchantman for twenty-four hours, and at times were near enough to fire a few shots with their long bow-chaser; but a fresh breeze sprang up, quickly increased to a gale, and the Frenchman escaped.

This was the nearest approach to a naval engagement they experienced during their stay on the war frigate.  They cruised along the coast of Ireland and Scotland, went to Spain, entered the waters of the Mediterranean for a few weeks, and then returned to the Atlantic, sailing for the West Indies.