What with cleaning the decks and cleaning themselves, the watch below have fully enough to do to get all ready by five bells.  It must be remembered, too, that they have had the morning watch to keep, since four o’clock, and the whole trouble of washing the upper decks, shaking out the reefs, stowing the hammocks, and coiling down the ropes; all easy matters of routine, it is true, but still sufficiently tiresome when multiplied so often.

At the appointed hour of half-past ten, to a single stroke of the bell, the mate of the watch, directed by the officer on deck, who again acts in obedience to the captain’s orders, conveyed to him by the first lieutenant, calls out,—­

“Beat to divisions!”

It should have been stated, that, before this period arrives, the mate of the decks and the mate of the hold, the boatswain, gunner, and carpenter, have all severally received reports from their subordinates that their different departments are in proper order for inspection.  Reports to the same effect being then finally made to the first lieutenant by the mates and warrant-officers, he himself goes round the ship to see that all is right and tight, preparatory to the grand inspection.  I ought also to have mentioned that the bags of the watch below are piped up at ten o’clock, so that nothing remains between decks but the mess-tables, stools, and the soup and grog kids.  Long before this hour, the greater number of the whole ship’s company have dressed themselves and are ready for muster; but the never-ending sweepers, the fussy warrant-officers’ yeomen, the exact purser’s steward, the slovenly midshipmen’s boy, the learned loblolly boy, and the interminable host of officers’ servants, who have always fifty extra things to do, are often so sorely pressed for time, that at the first tap of the drum beating to divisions, these idlers, as they are technically much miscalled, may often be seen only then lugging their shirts over their heads, or hitching up their trousers in all the hurry-scurry of a lower-deck toilet.  I should have recorded that in the ship’s head, as well as on the fore-part of the main-deck, and likewise between the guns, chiefly those abreast of the fore-hatchway, there have been groups assembled to scrape and polish themselves ever since breakfast-time, and even before it.  Some are washing themselves; others cutting, and combing, and trimming their hair; for, now-a-days, there are none of those huge long tails, or club ties, which descended along the back of the sailors who fought with Benbow and Rodney.  The dandyism of Jack has now taken another turn, and the knowing thing at present is to have a parcel of ringlets hanging from the temples almost to the collar-bone.  Some of the youngest and best-looking of the foretop-men would also very fain indulge in the feminine foppery of ear-rings; but in the British Navy this is absolutely forbidden.