a hurried meal, lies down and goes to sleep,
with a selfish timidity that is amusingly
characteristic. Then, there is a yellow, clay-
faced Spanish woman, a fat, vulgar
shopkeeper's wife from Tarifa, who sits at table
on a camp-stool with that flaccid, lack-lustre,
cheerless look of sea-sick people who no joke
can brighten: she picks out her food,
grumbles in Spanish at the blood-red meat
the English eat, laps up a vulgar quantity
of soup, and smiles faintly. The fat,
merry head steward is our chairman.
Signora sits at table with her green parrot
Maraquita perched on her left wrist, and
taps him on the head with the spoon if
he venture to peck more than his share
out of the plate. It is amusing to see the
old bird roll the grey blind film over his
stealthy eye, waiting for her head to turn.
Sometimes she shares an apple with him;
and it is rare to see our droll steward chirp
out Maraquita, in a funny rythmical voice,
as the bird eats the fruit, using his claw as a
fork, and his bill as a sort of scissors-knife.
Then there is the lady's father—an old Spanish
miser, not the least troubled by the sea; but
dry, stolid, sullen, and cautious. He eats
voraciously, and seldom goes on deck; but
sits near his bundles—which the steward says
contain all his money—all day he broods
in a corner of the cabin on a stool, like a
man whose life is a burden to him; or one
who, not caring for travelling, regards it only
as a means. He is emigrating to Rio Janeiro.
He never laughs, or even smiles; but sits
under the hatchway roof, where I see him,
when I come down to my frequent sleeps
during the day, hid in the swinging shadow
that shows his low, careworn brow, and mean,
anxious eyes, alternately dark and light. The
higgler from Gibraltar—not a refined man, but
amusing from his absurd airs of gentlemanly
care for his very dirty dress—makes a special
butt of this old man, encourages the droll
steward to gibe him, and, taking advantage
of his being dumb and deaf as to our
language, keeps calling, "Speak to him, steward,
speak to him! Ask the old man something,
steward! Speak to him!" till I have to
interfere; for I see the hot Andalusian blood
turning Pedro's yellow eye-balls red; and even
old men can use knives. Then our Gibraltar
friend laughs in his cringing, insolent way,
gets more gorgeous and imperial than ever;
requests the loan of a hat-brush, pulls his
grimy collar up and his grimy cuffs down,
devotes half an hour to unpacking a blue
hat box full of Gibraltar fruit, looking at the
rough gold-rinded melon to see if it has burst,
rubbing some pomegranates, and eventually
repacking them all but one half-rotten apple,
which he peals and ravenously eats all to
himself; he then launches out into a
ridiculous rhapsody of theological philosophy,
which makes the little usher above me shake
in his tray. I can feel the tray over me
shake with indignant and contemptuous
amusement: If it was the steward, he
would mutter Stultissimus, to catch my
ear, but he is afraid of the philosophical
higgler, so cries Bene, bene, and sophõs,
as if at a Roman play, which rather pleases
"the party from Gib," as the steward
calls the fruit merchant when he is on
deck.

The steward is a born jester. Just such
a fellow as Shakspeare took for his stock to
graft a Touchstone upon: a dry, quick-witted
fellow; always singing, sweeping,
joking, washing, laughing, and making the
beds. His stories of the sultan of Trebizond—
who offered him three pounds a-week
as prime minister, and whose acquaintance
he picked up while carrying that august
personage in a fruit-ship which he commanded
to Stamboul—were full of unctuous fun. If
you awoke at six o'clock with a buzzing in
your ears, the steward was sure to be up and
busy, singing,

"I've a heart that can feel for another,"

the Rose of Allandale, or some heart-piercing
ditty which his droll face lent
especial charm to. But dinner was his great
moment. Then, if anybody called him a
fool, he asked what sort of fool—a natural
fool, or an artificial fool: then he told
the square of laughing faces, if any one
asked him where he thought they were? he
said: "Somewhere here; as Geordy said to
the fool when he rubbed his hand over the
captain's chart." Then, he wished he could
invite us all to his house that was not built
at Fiddler's-green. A heavy wave thumping
at regular intervals on the ship's side rather
ominously, he facetiously called, "Somebody
knocking at the door." If a boy was stupid,
he used to say that he'd rather any day
have a dirty rogue than a hanged fool.
He ran over with proverbial sayings, that
would have made Charles Lamb leap for joy.
He was fond of asking whether, if the vessel
went down, he should come and let us know.
If you flung a joke at him, he returned it as
sharply as a fives' court wall gives back a
tennis ball.

On a rough day—when the cabin-doors
were slamming, the sails blowing out, and
now and then splitting with the noise of a
cannon, the sea smiting the vessel hard
body-blows, and then swashing over her with a
roll and sprinkle and rinse that kept us
all below, threatening to drench us even
there—it was pleasant to see the steward,
singing Paddy O'Rafferty was a
Haymaker (rough weather puts old sailors in
good spirits) and coming splashing down
the brass-bound cabin-stairs, barefooted,
his streaming mackintosh wet, shining,
and dripping; in one hand a dish of
potatoes, in the other the traditional boiled
leg of mutton, piled up with coagulated
floods of melted butter common to steamer-
dinners.