“It’s a grand life, my boy!  You’re up against realities all the time.  Not a sham within the horizon.  You eat till you burst, work till you sleep, and sleep till you’re kicked awake.  You should just see Liosha.  Maturin says he has only met one other woman sailor like her, and that was the daughter of a trader sailing among the Islands, who had lived all her life since birth on his ship and had scarcely slept ashore.  She’s as much born to it as any shell-back on board.  She has the amazing gift of looking part of the tub, like the stokers and the man at the wheel.  Unlike another woman, she’s never in the way, and the more work you can give her to do, the happier she is.  She’s in magnificent health and as strong as a horse.  At first the hands didn’t know what to make of her; now she’s friends with the whole bunch.  The difficulty is to keep her from overfamiliar intercourse with them, for though she signed on as cook’s mate, she eats in the cabin with the officers, and between the cabin and the fo’c’sle lies a great gulf.  They come and tell her about their wives and their girls and what rotten food they’ve got—­’Everybody has got rotten food on board ship, you silly ass!’ quoth Liosha.  ’What do you expect—­sweetbreads and ices?’—­and what soul-shattering blighters they’ve shipped with, and what deeds of heroism (mostly imaginary) they have performed in pursuit of their perilous calling.  They’re all children, you know, when you come to the bottom of them, these hell-tearing fellows—­children afflicted with a perpetual thirst and a craving to punch heads—­and Liosha’s a child, too; so there’s a kind of freemasonry between them.

“There was the devil’s own row in the fo’c’sle the other evening.  The first mate went to look into it and found Liosha standing enraptured at the hatch looking down upon a free fight.  There were knives about.  The mate, being a blasphemous and pugilistic dog, soon restored order.  Then he came up to Liosha—­you and Barbara should have seen her—­it was sultry, not a breath of air—­and she just had on a thin bodice open at her throat and the sleeves rolled up and a short ragged skirt and was bareheaded.

“’Why the Hades didn’t you stop ’em, missus?’

“For some reason or the other, the whole ship’s company, except the skipper and myself, call her ‘missus.’  She gazed on him like an ox-eyed Juno; you know her way.

“‘Why should I interfere with their enjoyment?’

“‘Enjoyment—!’ he gasped.  ‘Oh, my Gawd!’ He flung out his arms and came over to me.  I was smoking against the taffrail.  ’There they was trying to cut one another’s throats, and she calls it enjoyment.’

“He went off spluttering.  I watched Liosha.  A Dutchman—­what you would call a Swede—­a hulking beggar, came up from the fo’c’sle very much the worse for wear.  Liosha says: 

“‘Mr. Andrews was very angry, Petersen.’

“He grinned.  ‘He was, missus.’

“‘What was it all about?’