From the time we signed the articles, we were never left to ourselves.  Truculent-looking men accompanied us to our several boarding-houses, paid our debts for us, finally bringing us by boat to a ship lying out in the bay.  As we passed under her stern, I read the name cachalot, of New Bedford; but as soon as we ranged alongside, I realized that I was booked for the sailor’s horror—­a cruise in a whaler.  Badly as I wanted to get to sea, I had not bargained for this, and would have run some risks to get ashore again; but they took no chances, so we were all soon aboard.  Before going forward, I took a comprehensive glance around, and saw that I was on board of a vessel belonging to a type which has almost disappeared off the face of the waters.  A more perfect contrast to the trim-built English clipper-ships that I had been accustomed to I could hardly imagine.  She was one of a class characterized by sailors as “built by the mile, and cut off in lengths as you want ’em,” bow and stern almost alike, masts standing straight as broomsticks, and bowsprit soaring upwards at an angle of about forty-five degrees.  She was as old-fashioned in her rig as in her hull; but I must not go into the technical differences between rigs, for fear of making myself tedious.  Right in the centre of the deck, occupying a space of about ten feet by eight, was a square erection of brickwork, upon which my wondering gaze rested longest, for I had not the slightest idea what it could be.  But I was rudely roused from my meditations by the harsh voice of one of the officers, who shouted, “Naow then, git below an’ stow yer dunnage, ’n look lively up agin.”  I took the broad hint, and shouldering my traps, hurried forward to the fo’lk’sle, which was below deck.  Tumbling down the steep ladder, I entered the gloomy den which was to be for so long my home, finding it fairly packed with my shipmates.  A motley crowd they were.  I had been used in English ships to considerable variety of nationality; but here were gathered, not only the representatives of five or six nations, but ’long-shoremen of all kinds, half of whom had hardly ever set eyes on a ship before!  The whole space was undivided by partition, but I saw at once that black men and white had separated themselves, the blacks taking the port side and the whites the starboard.  Finding a vacant bunk by the dim glimmer of the ancient teapot lamp that hung amidships, giving out as much smoke as light, I hurriedly shifted my coat for a “jumper” or blouse, put on an old cap, and climbed into the fresh air again.  For a double reason, even my seasoned head was feeling bad with the villainous reek of the place, and I did not want any of those hard-featured officers on deck to have any cause to complain of my “hanging back.”  On board ship, especially American ships, the first requisite for a sailor who wants to be treated properly is to “show willing,” any suspicion of slackness being noted immediately, and the backward one marked