of those in authority on board, it gradually leaked out that we
really had fallen upon quite a wrong time for such a voyage, for we
very soon found ourselves in the tropics during their hottest month
(early in August), and after having been nearly roasted for three
weeks, we plunged abruptly into mid-winter, or at all events very
early spring, off the Cape of Good Hope, and went through a season
of bitterly cold weather, with three heavy gales. I pitied the poor
sailors from the bottom of my heart, at their work all night on
decks slippery with ice, and pulling at ropes so frozen that it was
almost impossible to bend them; but, thank God, there were no
casualties among the men. The last gale was the most severe; they
said it was the tail of a cyclone. One is apt on land to regard
such phrases as the "shriek of the storm," or "the roar of the
waves," as poetical hyperboles; whereas they are very literal and
expressive renderings of the sounds of horror incessant throughout a
gale at sea. Our cabin, though very nice and comfortable in other
respects, possessed an extraordinary attraction for any stray wave
which might be wandering about the saloon: once or twice I have been
in the cuddy when a sea found its way down the companion, and I have
watched with horrible anxiety a ton or so of water hesitating which
cabin it should enter and deluge, and it always seemed to choose
ours. All these miseries appear now, after even a few days of the
blessed land, to belong to a distant past; but I feel inclined to
lay my pen down and have a hearty laugh at the recollection of one
cold night, when a heavy "thud" burst open our cabin door, and
washed out all the stray parcels, boots, etc., from the corners in
which the rolling of the ship had previously bestowed them. I was
high and dry in the top berth, but poor F--- in the lower recess was
awakened by the douche, and no words of mine can convey to you the
utter absurdity of his appearance, as he nimbly mounted on the top