The crew were astoundingly ill-clad and destitute
and dirty; most of them youths, unwashed, out of colliers. One, the cook
was a mulatto; and one, the best-built fellow of them all, was a Breton.
There was some subterfuge about our position on board--I forget the
particulars now--I was called the supercargo and Pollack was the
steward. This added to the piratical flavour that insufficient funds and
Gordon-Nasmyth's original genius had already given the enterprise.
Those two days of bustle at Gravesend, under dingy skies, in narrow,
dirty streets, were a new experience for me. It is like nothing else in
my life. I realised that I was a modern and a civilised man. I found
the food filthy and the coffee horrible; the whole town stank in my
nostrils, the landlord of the Good Intent on the quay had a stand-up
quarrel with us before I could get even a hot bath, and the bedroom
I slept in was infested by a quantity of exotic but voracious flat
parasites called locally "bugs," in the walls, in the woodwork,
everywhere. I fought them with insect powder, and found them comatose
in the morning.
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