CHAPTER XXII.
WASH-DAY AND HOUSE-CLEANING IN A MAN-OF-WAR.
Besides the other tribulations connected with your hammock, you must keep it snow-white and clean; who has not observed the long rows of spotless hammocks exposed in a frigate's nettings, where, through the day, their outsides, at least, are kept airing?
Hence it comes that there are regular mornings appointed for the scrubbing of hammocks; and such mornings are called _scrub-hammock-mornings;_ and desperate is the scrubbing that ensues.
Before daylight the operation begins.

All hands are called, and at it they go.

Every deck is spread with hammocks, fore and aft; and lucky are you if you can get sufficient superfices to spread your own hammock in.

Down on their knees are five hundred men, scrubbing away with brushes and brooms; jostling, and crowding, and quarrelling about using each other's suds; when all their Purser's soap goes to create one indiscriminate yeast.
Sometimes you discover that, in the dark, you have been all the while scrubbing your next neighbour's hammock instead of your own.

But it is too late to begin over again; for now the word is passed for every man to advance with his hammock, that it may be tied to a net-like frame-work of clothes-lines, and hoisted aloft to dry.
That done, without delay you get together your frocks and trowsers, and on the already flooded deck embark in the laundry business.