voyagers, additions to the eating and drinking
department in the shape of a cold curry
in a jar, a piece of spiced beef, a side of
bacon, and a liberal supply of wine, spirits,
and beer, nobody can be surprised to hear
that we found some difficulty in making only
one cart-load of our whole collection of stores.
The packing process was, in fact, not accomplished
till after dark. The tide was then flowing;
we were to sail the next morning; and it
was necessary to get everything put on board
that night, while there was water enough for
the Tomtit to be moored close to the jetty.

This jetty, it must be acknowledged, was
nothing but a narrow stone causeway, sloping
down from the land into the sea. Imagine
our cart, loaded with breakable things, at
the high end of the jetty, and the Tomtit
waiting to receive the contents of the cart at
the low end, in the water. Imagine no
moon, no stars, no lamp of any kind on
shore; imagine one small lanthorn on board
the vessel, which just showed how dark it
was, and did nothing more; imagine the
doctor, and the doctor's friend, and the
doctor's two dogs, and Mr. Migott and Mr.
Jollins, all huddled together in a fussy state
of expectation, midway on the jetty, seeing
nothing, doing nothing, and being very much
in the way. Imagine all these things, and
then wonder, as we wondered, at the
marvellous dexterity of our three valiant sailors,
who actually succeeded in transporting piece-
meal the crockery, cookery, and general
contents of the cart into the vessel, on that
pitchy night, without breaking, spilling, dropping,
bumping, or forgetting anything. When
I hear of professional conjurors performing
remarkable feats, I think of the brothers
Dobbs, and the loading of the Tomtit in the
darkness; and I ask myself if any landsman's
mechanical legerdemain can be more
extraordinary than the natural neat-handedness
of a sailor?

The next morning the sky was black, the
wind was blowing hard against us, and the
waves were showing their white frills angrily
in the offing. A double row of spectators
had assembled at the jetty, to see us beat out
of the bay. If they had come to see us
hanged, their grim faces could not have
expressed greater commiseration. Our only
cheerful farewell came from the doctor and
his friend and the two dogs. The remainder
of the spectators evidently felt that they
were having a last long stare at us, and that
it would be indecent and unfeeling, under the
circumstances, to look happy. Give me a
respectable inhabitant of an English country
town, and I will match him, in the matter of
stolid and silent staring, against any other
man, civilised or savage, over the whole
surface of the globe.

If we had felt any doubts of the sea-going
qualities of the Tomtit, they would have been
solved when we "went about," for the first
time, after leaving the jetty. A livelier,
stiffer, and drier little vessel of her size never
was built. She jumped over the waves, as if
the sea was a great play-ground, and the
game for the morning Leap-Frog. Though
the wind was so high that we were obliged
to lower our foresail, and to double-reef the
mainsail, the only water we got on board was
the spray that was blown over us from the
tops of the waves. In the state of the
weather, getting down Channel was out of
the question. We were obliged to be
contented, on this first day of our voyage, with.
running across to the Welsh coast, and there
sheltering ourselves—amid a perfect fleet of
outward-bound merchantmen driven back by
the wind—in a snug roadstead, for the afternoon
and the night.

This delay, which might have been
disagreeable enough later in our voyage, gave
us just the time we wanted for setting things
to rights on board. Our little twelve-foot
cabin, it must be remembered, was bedroom,
sitting-room, dining-room, store-room, and
kitchen, all in one. Everything we wanted
for sleeping, reading, eating, and drinking,
had to be arranged in its proper place. The
butter and candles, the soap and cheese, the
salt and sugar, the bread and onions, the oil-
bottle and the brandy-bottle, for example,
had to be put in places where the motion of
the vessel could not roll them together, and
where, also, we could any of us find them at
a moment's notice. Other things, not of the
eatable sort, we gave up all idea of separating.
Mr. Migott and I mingled our stock of
shirts as we mingled our sympathies, our
fortunes, and our flowing punch-bowl after
dinner. We both of us have our faults; but
incapability of adapting ourselves cheerfully
to circumstances is not among them. Mr.
Migott, especially, is one of those rare men
who could dine politely off blubber in the
company of Esquimaux, and discover the
latent social advantages of his position if he
was lost in the darkness of the North Pole.

After the arrangement of goods and chattels,
came dinner (the curry warmed up with a
second course of fried onions), then the slinging
of our hammocks by the neat hands of
the Brothers Dobbs, and then the practice of
how to get into the hammocks, by Messrs.
Migott and Jollins. No landsman who has
not tried the experiment can form the faintest
notion of the luxury of the sailor's swinging
bed, or of the extraordinary difficulty of
getting into it for the first time. The
preliminary action is to stand with your back
against the middle of your hammock, and to
hold by the edge of the canvas on either side.
You then duck your head down, throw your
heels up, turn round on your back, and let go
with your hands, all at the same moment. If
you succeed in doing this, you are in the most
luxurious bed that the ingenuity of man has
ever invented. If you fail, you measure your
length on the floor. So much for hammocks..

After learning how to get into bed, the