You have no special bucket or basin to yourself--the ship being one vast wash-tub, where all hands wash and rinse out, and rinse out and wash, till at last the word is passed again, to make fast your clothes, that they, also, may be elevated to dry.
Then on all three decks the operation of holy-stoning begins, so called from the queer name bestowed upon the principal instruments employed.
These are ponderous flat stones with long ropes at each end, by which the stones are slidden about, to and fro, over the wet and sanded decks; a most wearisome, dog-like, galley-slave employment.

For the byways and corners about the masts and guns, smaller stones are used, called _prayer-books;_ inasmuch as the devout operator has to down with them on his knees.
Finally, a grand flooding takes place, and the decks are remorselessly thrashed with dry swabs.

After which an extraordinary implement--a sort of leathern hoe called a"_squilgee_"-- is used to scrape and squeeze the last dribblings of water from the planks.

Concerning this "squilgee," I think something of drawing up a memoir, and reading it before the Academy of Arts and Sciences.

It is a most curious affair.
By the time all these operations are concluded it is _eight bell's_, and all hands are piped to breakfast upon the damp and every-way disagreeable decks.
Now, against this invariable daily flooding of the three decks of a frigate, as a man-of-war's-man, White-Jacket most earnestly protests.
In sunless weather it keeps the sailors' quarters perpetually damp; so much so, that you can scarce sit down without running the risk of getting the lumbago.