The vessel was under way when Eric woke, and collected his scattered thoughts to a remembrance of his new position.  At first, as the Stormy Petrel dashed its way gallantly through the blue sea, he felt one absorbing sense of joy to have escaped from Roslyn.  But before he had been three hours on board, his eyes were opened to the trying nature of his circumstances, which were, indeed, so trying that anything in the world seemed preferable to enduring them.  He had not been three hours on board when he would have given everything in his power to be back again; but such regrets were useless, for the vessel was now fairly on her way for Corunna, where she was to lake in a cargo of cattle.

There were eight men belonging to the crew; and as the ship was only a little trading schooner, these were sailors of the lowest and meanest grade.  They all seemed to take their cue from the captain, who was a drunken, blaspheming, and cruel vagabond.

This man from the first took a savage hatred to Eric, partly because he was annoyed with Davey for bringing him on board.  The first words he addressed to him were—­

“I say, you young lubber, you must pay your footing.”

“I’ve got nothing to pay with.  I brought no money with me.”

“Well, then, you shall give us your gran’ clothes.  Them things isn’t fit for a cabin-boy.”

Eric saw no remedy, and making a virtue of necessity, exchanged his good cloth suit for a rough sailor’s shirt and trowsers, not over clean, which the captain gave him.  His own clothes were at once appropriated by that functionary, who carried them into his cabin.  But it was lucky for Eric that, seeing how matters were likely to go, he had succeeded in secreting his watch.

The day grew misty and comfortless, and towards evening the wind rose to a storm.  Eric soon began to feel very sick, and, to make his case worse, could not endure either the taste, smell, or sight of such coarse food as was contemptuously flung to him.

“Where am I to sleep?” he asked, “I feel very sick.”

“Babby,” said one of the sailors, “what’s your name?”

“Williams.”

“Well, Bill, you’ll have to get over your sickness pretty soon, I can tell ye.  Here,” he added, relenting a little, “Davey’s slung ye a hammock in the forecastle.”

He showed the way, but poor Eric in the dark, and amid the lurches of the vessel, could hardly steady himself down the companion-ladder, much less get into his hammock.  The man saw his condition, and, sulkily enough, hove him into his place.

And there, in that swinging bed, where sleep seemed impossible, and out of which, he was often thrown, when the ship rolled and pitched through the dark, heaving, discolored waves, and with dirty men sleeping round him at night, until the atmosphere of the forecastle became like poison, hopelessly and helplessly sick, and half-starved, the boy lay for two days.  The crew neglected him shamefully.  It was nobody’s business to wait on him, and he could procure neither sufficient food, nor any water; they only brought him some grog to drink, which in his weakness and sickness was nauseous to him as medicine.