done, and that the Golden Mary was afloat.

Grass never grew yet under the feet of Smithick and Watersby. The
riggers were out of that ship in a fortnight's time, and we had begun
taking in cargo. John was always aboard, seeing everything stowed with
his own eyes; and whenever I went aboard myself early or late, whether he
was below in the hold, or on deck at the hatchway, or overhauling his
cabin, nailing up pictures in it of the Blush Roses of England, the Blue
Belles of Scotland, and the female Shamrock of Ireland: of a certainty I
heard John singing like a blackbird.

We had room for twenty passengers. Our sailing advertisement was no
sooner out, than we might have taken these twenty times over. In
entering our men, I and John (both together) picked them, and we entered
none but good hands--as good as were to be found in that port. And so,
in a good ship of the best build, well owned, well arranged, well
officered, well manned, well found in all respects, we parted with our
pilot at a quarter past four o'clock in the afternoon of the seventh of
March, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one, and stood with a fair
wind out to sea.

It may be easily believed that up to that time I had had no leisure to be
intimate with my passengers. The most of them were then in their berths
sea-sick; however, in going among them, telling them what was good for
them, persuading them not to be there, but to come up on deck and feel
the breeze, and in rousing them with a joke, or a comfortable word, I
made acquaintance with them, perhaps, in a more friendly and confidential
way from the first, than I might have done at the cabin table.

Of my passengers, I need only particularise, just at present, a bright-