and he denies the possibility of the
vessel steering well, seeing that the Baltic is
full of magnetic islands, which cause the
needle to fly round to all parts of the compass
at once. To aggravate his imperfections,
he wears a tall hat, grossly sinning
against all the rules of nautical etiquette;
and he smokes the biggest and rankest of
Hamburg cigars, one of which, like an
ill-flavoured sausage, smoulders on the bench by
his side all dinner-time. He evidently prefers
the company of the second cabin passengers,
as a body, to ours; and audibly mutters that
the first-class accommodation is not worth—I
need not repeat what. Altogether, he is such
a baleful, malignant, wet-blanket son of a
gun, that I feel myself fast growing mutinous;
and his sinister prophecies go on
multiplying so rapidly, that I christen him JONAH,
and am very much inclined to sign a round-robin,
or to head a deputation of the passengers
to Captain Steffens, praying that he may be
cast into the sea. But where is the fish that
would consent to keep such a terrible old
bore for three days and nights in its belly?

As, when in a summer afternoon's nap you
have been drowsily annoyed, some half-hour
durant, by a big blue-bottle, and are
suddenly awakened by the sharp agony of a
hornet's sting full in the calf of your
favourite leg, so, suddenly does the passive
annoyance of Captain Smith's evil predictions
cede to the active torture of Miss
WAPPS'S persecution. Miss Wapps, English,
travelling alone, and aged forty, has taken it
into her fair head to entertain a violent
dislike to me, and pursues me with quite a
ferocity of antipathy. She is a lean and
bony spinster, with a curiously blue-bronzed
nose and cheek-bones to match, and a
remarkable mole on her chin with a solitary
hair growing from it like One Tree Hill at
Greenwich. She has a profusion of little
ringlets that twist and twine like the serpents
of the Furies that had taken to drinking,
and had been metamorphosed, as a
punishment, into corkscrews. To see her
perambulating the decks after they have
been newly swabbed, holding up her drapery,
and displaying a pair of baggy—well, I
suppose there is no harm in the word—
pantalettes, and with a great round flap hat
surmounting all, she looks ludicrously like
an overgrown schoolgirl. She is one of those
terrible specimens of humanity who have
a preconceived persuasion—a woman who
has made up her mind about everything—
arts, sciences, laws, learning, commerce,
religion, Shakespeare, and the musical-glasses
—and nothing can shake, nothing convince,
nothing mollify her. Her conclusions are
ordinarily unfavourable. She stayed a few
hours at the Drei Kronen at Stettin, where
I had the advantage of her society, and she
made up her mind at a very early stage of
our acquaintance that I was an impostor,
because I said that I was going to St. Petersburg.
"Many persons," she remarked, with
intense acerbity, "talk of going to Russia,
when they never go further than Gravesend.
I am going to St. Petersburg to recover my
property, devastated by the late unchristian
war." As this seemed a double-barrelled
insinuation, implying not only my having
stated the thing which was not, but
also the unlikelihood of my possessing any
property to be devastated or recovered, I
began to feel sufficiently uncomfortable, and
endeavoured to bring about a better state of
feeling, by asking Miss Wapps if I might
have the pleasure of helping her to some
wine. She overwhelmed me at once with a
carboy of vitriolic acid: she never took wine
—never! And though she said no more, it
was very easy to gather from Miss Wapps's
tone and looks that in her eyes the person
most likely to rob the Bank of England, go
over to the Pope of Rome, and assassinate
the Emperor of the French, would be the
man who did take wine to his dinner. She
flatly contradicted me, too, as to the amount
of the fare (which I had just paid) from
Stettin to Cronstadt. She had made up her
mind that it was one hundred and fifty
francs French money, and all the arguments
in the world could not bring her to recognise
the existence of such things as roubles or
thalers. But where she was Samsonically
strong against me was on the question of my
nationality. As I happen to be rather swart
of hue, and a tolerable linguist, she took it
into her head at once that I was a foreigner,
and addressed me as "Mossoo." In vain did
I try to convince her that I was born and
bred in London, within the sound of Bow
bells. To make the matter worse—it being
necessary for me, during one of the endless
passport formalities, to answer to my name,
which is not very English in sound—it
went conclusively to make out a case against
me in the mind of Miss Wapps. She called
me Mossoo again, but vengefully in sarcastic
accents; and complained of the infamy of
an honourable English gentlewoman being
beset by Jesuits and spies.

On board, Miss Wapps does not bate one
atom of her animosity. I have not the
fatuity to believe that I am what is usually
termed popular with the sex; but as I am, I
hope, inoffensive and a good listener, I have
been able to retain some desirable female
acquaintances: but there is no conciliating
Miss Wapps. She is enraged with me for
not being sea-sick. She unmistakeably gives
me to understand that I am a puppy,
because I wear the courier's bag slung by a
strap over my shoulder; and when I meekly
represent to her that it is very useful for
carrying lucifer-matches, a comb, change,
Bradshaw, cigars, eau-de-Cologne, a brandy-flask,
and such small matters, she gives utterance
to a peculiar kind of feminine grunt,
something between that of an asthmatic pig
and an elderly Wesleyan at a moving part of