in the saloon yesterday; and that passenger drinks his bottle of
champagne every day, and how he does it (being only a clerk),
nobody knows. The head engineer has distinctly said that there
never was such times - meaning weather - and four good hands are
ill, and have given in, dead beat. Several berths are full of
water, and all the cabins are leaky. The ship's cook, secretly
swigging damaged whiskey, has been found drunk; and has been played
upon by the fire-engine until quite sober. All the stewards have
fallen down-stairs at various dinner-times, and go about with
plasters in various places. The baker is ill, and so is the
pastry-cook. A new man, horribly indisposed, has been required to
fill the place of the latter officer; and has been propped and
jammed up with empty casks in a little house upon deck, and
commanded to roll out pie-crust, which he protests (being highly
bilious) it is death to him to look at. News! A dozen murders on
shore would lack the interest of these slight incidents at sea.

Divided between our rubber and such topics as these, we were
running (as we thought) into Halifax Harbour, on the fifteenth
night, with little wind and a bright moon - indeed, we had made the
Light at its outer entrance, and put the pilot in charge - when
suddenly the ship struck upon a bank of mud. An immediate rush on
deck took place of course; the sides were crowded in an instant;
and for a few minutes we were in as lively a state of confusion as
the greatest lover of disorder would desire to see. The
passengers, and guns, and water-casks, and other heavy matters,
being all huddled together aft, however, to lighten her in the
head, she was soon got off; and after some driving on towards an
uncomfortable line of objects (whose vicinity had been announced
very early in the disaster by a loud cry of 'Breakers a-head!') and