horizon was dotted all day with companionable sails, and the sun
shone pleasantly on the long, heaving deck.

We had many fine-weather diversions to beguile the time. There was
a single chess-board and a single pack of cards. Sometimes as many
as twenty of us would be playing dominoes for love. Feats of
dexterity, puzzles for the intelligence, some arithmetical, some of
the same order as the old problem of the fox and goose and cabbage,
were always welcome; and the latter, I observed, more popular as
well as more conspicuously well done than the former. We had a
regular daily competition to guess the vessel's progress; and
twelve o'clock, when the result was published in the wheel-house,
came to be a moment of considerable interest. But the interest was
unmixed. Not a bet was laid upon our guesses. From the Clyde to
Sandy Hook I never heard a wager offered or taken. We had,
besides, romps in plenty. Puss in the Corner, which we had
rebaptized, in more manly style, Devil and four Corners, was my own
favourite game; but there were many who preferred another, the
humour of which was to box a person's ears until he found out who
had cuffed him.

This Tuesday morning we were all delighted with the change of
weather, and in the highest possible spirits. We got in a cluster
like bees, sitting between each other's feet under lee of the deck-
houses. Stories and laughter went around. The children climbed
about the shrouds. White faces appeared for the first time, and
began to take on colour from the wind. I was kept hard at work
making cigarettes for one amateur after another, and my less than
moderate skill was heartily admired. Lastly, down sat the fiddler
in our midst and began to discourse his reels, and jigs, and