cockroaches creep in and out, the deck is so leaky that the water
squishes up under the saloon matting as we walk over it, the bread
swarms with minute ants, and we have to pick every piece over
because of weevils. Existence at night is an unequal fight with
rats and cockroaches, and at meals with the stewards for time to
eat. The stewards outnumber the passengers, and are the veriest
riff-raff I have seen on board ship. At meals, when the captain is
not below, their sole object is to hurry us from the table in order
that they may sit down to a protracted meal; they are insulting and
disobliging, and since illness has been on board, have shown a want
of common humanity which places them below the rest of their
species. The unconcealed hostility with which they regard us is a
marvellous contrast to the natural or purchasable civility or
servility which prevails on British steamers. It has its comic side
too, and we are content to laugh at it, and at all the other
oddities of this vaunted "Mail Line."

Our most serious grievance was the length of time that we were kept
in the damp inter-island region of the Tropic of Capricorn. Early
breakfasts, cold plunge baths, and the perfect ventilation of our
cabins, only just kept us alive. We read, wrote, and talked like
automatons, and our voices sounded thin and far away. We decided
that heat was less felt in exercise, made up an afternoon quoit
party, and played unsheltered from the nearly vertical sun, on decks
so hot that we required thick boots for the protection of our feet,
but for three days were limp and faint, and hardly able to crawl
about or eat. The nights were insupportable. We used to lounge on
the bow, and retire late at night to our cabins, to fight the heat,
and scare rats and kill cockroaches with slippers, until driven by
the solar heat to rise again unrefreshed to wrestle through another