They were crowded with men and officers aboard the Powhattan at that time, so I had to turn in with this mess. I was given a hammock--a nice, clean lot of bedding was bundled up inside; it had a number painted on it, to which my attention was carefully called; then I was shown the corresponding number on deck where that particular hammock fitted in like a chink in a log-house, and where, I was told, it had to be placed at a certain "bell," or when the boatswain would sing out a certain call.
When the time came to go for the hammocks the first night, I followed my leader, shouldered the bag, and marched down in line with the rest. I found afterward the most difficult thing to learn about the navy is to get _into_ a hammock, stretched above your head, and the next difficult thing is to stay in it, while the third trouble is to get out of it without lighting on your head.
My old guardian was busy somewhere with his lights, and when the signal came to turn in, every man of that immense crowd seemed to disappear, like so many prairie dogs into their holes, leaving me standing alone on the deck under my hammock. Then the petty officer, in his deep, bass voice, said something to me about clearing that deck. I made a jump for the thing, and hung half way across it, as if I were in a swing, able to get neither one way or the other--the hammock would move every time I'd move. Lots of bare heads were sticking out over the hammocks, offering advice of all sorts; one chap proposed to give me a leg, which I gratefully accepted, when he lifted me so quickly that I toppled over the other side of the hammock on to the floor, where I lay saying my evening prayers, while the whole lot of crows in the roosts above laughed at my predicament. The show was beginning to create so much noise down below that the fellow with the big voice was compelled to interfere and put a stop to it, which he did by ordering one of the men to hold my horse while I got aboard.
He kindly explained to me the _modus operandi_ of getting into a slung hammock, which was, as we used to say in tactics, in one time and three motions; first, grab the thing in a certain way with two hands, put one foot in first, and then deftly lift the body up and drop in; once there, the difficulty was not over, as it required some practice to keep balanced while asleep, especially to a landsman like myself. I was cautioned to part my hair in the middle, and lie there as stiff as a corpse.
