We had another bad night of it--a head wind, the sea washing over the
decks, everything shut up, and the thermometer standing at 90°.

_Sunday, January 14th_.--I was on deck at 4 a.m. The Southern Cross,
the Great Bear, and the North Star, were shining with a brilliancy
that eclipsed all the other stars.

During the day the wind freshened to a squally gale. Sometimes we were
going ten, sometimes thirteen, and sometimes fifteen knots through the
water, knocking about a good deal all the while. Service was an
impossibility; cooking and eating, indeed, were matters of difficulty.
It rained heavily, and the seas came over the deck continually.

Many of the sailors and servants were ill. I was hopelessly so.
Nothing annoys me more than to find that, after having sailed tens and
tens of thousands of miles, I cannot cure myself of sea-sickness. I
can stand a good deal more rolling than I once could; but still, many
are the days when nothing but the firmest determination not to think
about it, but to find something to do, and to do it with all my might,
keeps me on my feet at all. Fewer, happily, are the days when
struggling is of no avail, when I am utterly and hopelessly
incapacitated, ignominiously and literally laid flat on my back, and
when no effort of will can enable me to do what I most wish to
accomplish. If only some physician could invent a sovereign remedy for
sea-sickness, he would deserve well of his country, and of mankind in
general.

_Monday, January 15th_.--I woke once or twice in the night, and felt
exactly as if I were being pulled backwards through the water by my
hair. We were rushing and tearing along at such a pace, against a head