her purse of clear gain on the voyage, a conviction arises that she
_could_ not guess wrongly. She might have tossed up, having coins
in her pocket, _heads or tails_? but this kind of sortilege was
then coming to be thought irreligious in Christendom, as a Jewish and a
Heathen mode of questioning the dark future. She simply guessed,
therefore; and very soon a thing happened which, though adding nothing
to strengthen her guess as a true one, did much to sweeten it if it
should prove a false one. On turning a point of the shore, she came
upon a barrel of biscuit washed ashore from the ship. Biscuit is about
the best thing I know, but it is the soonest spoiled; and one would
like to hear counsel on one puzzling point, why it is that a touch of
water utterly ruins it, taking its life, and leaving a _caput
mortuum_ corpse! Upon this _caput_ Kate breakfasted, though
_her_ case was worse than mine; for any water that ever plagued
_me_ was always fresh; now _hers_ was a present from the
Pacific ocean. She, that was always prudent, packed up some of the
Catholic king's biscuit, as she had previously packed up far too little
of his gold. But in such cases a most delicate question occurs,
pressing equally on medicine and algebra. It is this: if you pack up
too much, then, by this extra burthen of salt provisions, you may
retard for days your arrival at fresh provisions; on the other hand, if
you pack up too little, you may never arrive at all. Catalina hit the
_juste milieu;_ and about twilight on the second day, she found
herself entering Paita, without having had to swim any river in her
walk.

The first thing, in such a case of distress, which a young lady does,
even if she happens to be a young gentleman, is to beautify her dress.
Kate always attended to _that_, as we know, having overlooked her
in the chestnut wood. The man she sent for was not properly a tailor,