no truth in the statement that Tiffin is fifty-
eight pounds sterling (a dreadful amount of
sicca rupees to deduct from your subaltern's
pay. Tiffin) in debt to Miss Anne Tolloddle—
all money lost at cards. Can this be true?
Can it be true that Captain Chillumjee shuts
himself np in his cabin nightly with Cady,
drinks cold rum and water, and plays at the
coarse but exciting game of spoilt fives; aye,
and that he plays deep? At all events,
nobody looks weary now; nobody yawns,
mopes about the deck, or potters in the
rigging or hammock rattlings. Nobody cares
when the ship is due at Plymouth; whether
the winds are fair or adverse. The Log—
that great nautical newspaper—is still
interesting, for the passengers bet, and for heavy
stakes, upon the number of knots the ship
made yesterday, and the probable number
she will make to-morrow. There are quarrels,
but they are disputes about who had the
king; the odd trick; the colour of the trump,
the flush of five, and the last card. There are
scandals; but they are gossipping reports of
Cady's winnings, Griffin's losses, Lady
Tolloddle's avarice, and Colonel Straubenzee's
disinclination to fair play. And all this while
—upon the topmast truck of the highest mast
of the Huccabadar; above each yard and sail,
above mainsail, main-topgallant, sky-scraper,
moon-raker, and jack-above-all, is perched,
crowing lustily, the bird of play, the game-
cock. He crows, for he has cured the gentlefolks
aft of their weariness; and the spurs on
his heels are the spurs of avarice and lust of
conquest, envy, hatred, malice, and all
uncharitableness. And so, for England ho!

I do not think that those who have
undertaken a long voyage on ship-board, and have
experienced that line, exciting, unwholsome
relief of the diversion that never flags—
gambling—will accuse me of having over-
charged this picture much. Nautical gambling
is even historical. The Earl of Sandwich lost
four hundred pieces at play in his cabin, the
night before the engagement in which he lost
his life. Sir Edward Morgan and his
buccaneers gambled the spoils of Panama among
themselves in their filibustering craft.
Napoleon, they say, would have died of ennui in
his voyage in the Northumberland from
Plymouth to St. Helena, if it had not been for
écarté.

But, if yon would desire to see marine
play in its perfection, take a trip to the
Spanish Main, or to the scorching Brazils,
and come back in the first cabin of a
mail steamer,—say the Landcrab, Captain
Mango. Now a voyage from the West
Indies, or even from the Brazils, is not so
very wearisome an affair. In the first, there
are numerous beautiful islands to touch at,
—gardens of Eden, but with the deadly fever-
serpent, Yellow Jack, coiled up in the midst.
Then there is the excitement of sharks: then
there are strange tempests and hurricanes,
not to be seen in other latitudes,—storms
when the sky turns pitchy black and the
waves foam white; when strange birds wheel
about the masts, or fall dead with fright upon
the decks; when the lightning rends and
splits up the clouds into shreds; and when
the thunder screams as well as roars. Take
your berth in the saloon of the Landcrab,
and you may have your fill of play; for there
are on board Spanish and Portuguese Dons,—
sallow moustachioed senhors, with long black
hair and long pedigrees. They wear broad-
brimmed, grass-plait hats; nankeen coats, in
which light pink and salmon-tint are the
colours most affected; patent leather boots;
large turn-down collars; gold sleeve-buttons;
and striped pantaloons. Their fingers are
covered with jewelled rings. They frequently
carry uncut diamonds in their waistcoat
pockets. They wear massive ear-rings. They
smoke without cessation, save to eat, and
even then they lay their cigarettes down on
the table-cloth by the side of their soup-
plates, and resume the fragrant weed when
they have finished their potage. They have
wives pale, youthful, and languid, who swing in
silken hammocks, who sleep a great deal, who
have large black eyes (such eyes!), and who,
I regret to say, also smoke cigarettes. They
have numerous families of gorgeously-dressed
children, on whom attend black servants,
with particoloured handkerchiefs tied round
their heads. They (the Dons) have all a
dozen names, more or less. Down in the
hold they have vast amounts of specie, of
which due mention will be made in the Times
when the Landcrab arrives at Southampton;
huge clumsy-looking ingots like bricks, or
rather pigs of gold; saffron-like gold-dust, in
deal boxes, rudely nailed together; chips and
splinters and flakes of gold; chests of fat
pillar dollars, and flaccid, perspiring, bilious-
looking doubloons; small kegs, where
services of plate are packed in straw,—plate
rude in workmanship, but, ah! how precious
in metal at per ounce! These Dons—who
will be set upon in London by touters, and
conveyed forcibly to horrible dens smelling
of bad oil and garlic, miscalled hotels and
boarding-houses, situate in the purlieus of
Finsbury Square, among sugar-bakers and
second-hand furniture shops, and kept by
mouldy females, single, of equivocal nationality,
but who call themselves Doña, and where,
unhappy Dons! they will have to pay about
six times more than they ought for execrable
accommodation—these Dons, for I need
reiterate my words after a parenthesis of
such unwarrantable length, are men singularly
mild, amiable, and inoffensive in demeanour.
They are neither so proud nor so
saturnine as the European Spaniards; but they
are mercurial, garrulous, gesticulatory, nay,
what I may be permitted to call frisky.
They are men, too, of admirable sobriety,
taking very little wine, and never, by any
chance, exceeding in their potations. But
they gamble, these Dons, like the very