"Now, my tars," he cries, "take your places.
Tom, you run for two more spoons, and
tell the French doctor and the two Welshmen
dinner is ready."

Yet, the merry steward notwithstanding,
what "a weary pound of tow," that was
from which I now spin my sea-yarns! How
drearily and leaden-footed passed the hours!
I awake with a clink or racket over deck;
and, there comes over me the dull sense of
being at sea: cabined, cribbed, confined. If
I spring up with the vivacious energy of
land thinking something has happened, I
knock my head against the boarded bottom
of the little querulous usher's bed-tray. It
is hard to get one's hand into the little gutter
at the bedside where I keep my watch, my
toothbrush, and my Don Quixote. The little
man will not hear of rising. "The motion is
worse," he thinks, by the perpetual chirp
and chirrup of the boatswain's whistle, with
the two angry cuckoo notes, that they are
going to put on more sail. I leap out of my
tray half-dressed. The steward is scraping
a burnt loaf, and singing Beautiful Eyes.
I prepare to perform my toilette, walled in
as I am with beds. One sniff of air at the
foot of the cabin-stairs, seems like the breath
of a May morning after that little black-hole,
with its four horizontal trays. I stagger,
holding on by the beds, to the brown painted
bason with the tap and chain, to the glass and
the row of tumblers stuck in frames. I wash
and dress hastily; for three people are waiting,
particularly two hearty Welsh miners,
going out to the mines at Linares, and who
are always saying "Look you," and talking
of "the seese in Wales," and the "trout fis
at Dolgethly."

Every now and then I am jolted up against
the cabin-door, hasten on deck to see where we
are, just as the ship-bell strikes,and the sturdy
voice chants out the hour. There it is: all
the same as last night. The same unswerving
face at the wheel; the same man in dirty
canvas shirt on the look-out, talking when
the chief officer is not looking. The same
greasy black-boy swarming up a spar to
furbish its copper-sheathings, clinging with one
hand and rubbing with the other. Another
ship-boy, with bare feet, dragging about a
great wet swab of rope, which he finally
hangs near the bowsprit on its special peg.
There is the captain busy at the log-book in
his glazed cabin. There, the second officer,
musical and melancholy upon the accordion;
the chief engineer silent and sullen on the
foksal. On the quarter-deck there are the
two young bagsmen, who affect the nautical;
and, when they are ill—which they are every
day—declare that they are old yachtsmen;
but these "cursed steamers," always upset
them. They call for coffee. There is the old
merchant from Corunna, who saw Sir John
Moore buried, and the little, shrunk man
who tells a story of saving his wife in a
wreck, off somewhere near Cape Saint
Vincent. The deck is wet, but clean. The engine
is trembling and lifting, and heaving, and
breathing hard—just as usual—and there
are the industrious stokers still raking at
orange-coloured flames with the slam of
furnace doors, and the perpetual jolting and
shovelling in of coal. The sailors are high
up on the yards taking in sail, and the chief
mate—a good man—is telling the greasy,
barefoot boy to leave his copper and do
something to what I believe is called the
weather-earring.

Very choice, rapid, and hard-hitting are
the chief mate's interjections, fired up like
bullets at the prudent boy. The good but
violent man, shouting till he is red and blue
in the face, puts both his hands together,
like a trumpet, and screams through them:—

"Halloa! you Rogers, there! Why the
blank don't you out further on that yard—
eh?"

The sailors all doubling over on the long
horizontal spar, go on tying the reef points
or hauling at the great central black mass
of bed-clothes-looking canvas, but steal a
moment for a flying glance at Rogers and his
tormentor. Rogers stoops down, clinging with
one hand, and bellows out some excuse, but
the blustering wind that sucks in and out the
yet unreefed studdingsail below him drowns
his reply.

The chief mate, craving sympathy, looks
at me injured and beseeching; then, with
a private adjective or two (kept for the
special rough weather, with a fresh broadside
of rage) thunders out high above the
wind:—

"Why, you son of a sea-cook, there's room
enough on that yard beyond you for a country
dance. As sure as you come down I'll give
you a rope's end, you blank lubber." Then, to
help, with springing step on the ladders of
rope-stirrups, up go two or three more able-
bodies, and swarm out on the yard dragging
at the canvas, and lashing it up, as neat
as if it was never going to be disturbed
again.

I have been watching the white-capped,
white-clad cook making toast on a large
scale, and spreading the butter with a large
paint-brush for first-cabin breakfast, when
our steward comes up and tells me our meal
is ready.

Do I know where the little gentleman is?
He has actually got up.

I find the little man sitting like a vignette
to Harvey's Meditations among the Tombs, on
one of those long, cane elbow-seats peculiar
to steamers' quarter-decks, where, by day, we
read, and at night told stories, joked, sang,
and flirted; one hand is on his forehead, his
look is vapid and lack-lustrous.

"O, it is you! Isn't this dreadful?"

"I feel very jolly," says one of the yachtsmen,
who turned in yesterday during the
swell, and had only just appeared.

"O, it is astonishing," said the hardy yachtsman