was soon forgotten in another kind of malady. It blew half a
gale before we were out of the Channel, and by the time we
had rounded Ushant it was as dirty weather as ever I hope to
see. I lay mortal sick in my bunk, unable to bear the thought
of food, and too feeble to lift my head. I wished I had never
left home, but so acute was my sickness that if some one had
there and then offered me a passage back or an immediate
landing on shore I should have chosen the latter.

It was not till we got into the fair-weather seas around
Madeira that I recovered enough to sit on deck and observe
my fellow-passengers. There were some fifty of us in the
steerage, mostly wives and children going to join relations,
with a few emigrant artisans and farmers. I early found a
friend in a little man with a yellow beard and spectacles, who
sat down beside me and remarked on the weather in a strong
Scotch accent. He turned out to be a Mr Wardlaw from
Aberdeen, who was going out to be a schoolmaster. He was a
man of good education, who had taken a university degree,
and had taught for some years as an under-master in a school
in his native town. But the east winds had damaged his lungs,
and he had been glad to take the chance of a poorly paid
country school in the veld. When I asked him where he was
going I was amazed to be told, 'Blaauwildebeestefontein.'

Mr Wardlaw was a pleasant little man, with a sharp tongue
but a cheerful temper. He laboured all day at primers of the
Dutch and Kaffir languages, but in the evening after supper
he would walk with me on the after-deck and discuss the
future. Like me, he knew nothing of the land he was going to,