but, considering the real hardship of the life--damp, cold, queer
food, and bad drink--I think I am better. When we can get past
Finisterre, I shall do very well, I doubt not.

The children swarm on board, and cry unceasingly. A passenger-ship
is no place for children. Our poor ship will lose her character by
the weather, as she cannot fetch up ten days' lost time. But she
is evidently a race-horse. We overhaul everything we see, at a
wonderful rate, and the speed is exciting and pleasant; but the
next long voyage I make, I'll try for a good wholesome old
'monthly' tub, which will roll along on the top of the water,
instead of cutting through it, with the waves curling in at the
cuddy skylights. We tried to signal a barque yesterday, and send
home word 'all well'; but the brutes understood nothing but
Russian, and excited our indignation by talking 'gibberish ' to us;
which we resented with true British spirit, as became us.

It is now blowing hard again, and we have just been taken right
aback. Luckily, I had lashed my desk to my washing-stand, or that
would have flown off, as I did off my chair. I don't think I shall
know what to make of solid ground under my feet. The rolling and
pitching of a ship of this size, with such tall masts, is quite
unlike the little niggling sort of work on a steamer--it is the
difference between grinding along a bad road in a four-wheeler, and
riding well to hounds in a close country on a good hunter. I was
horribly tired for about five days, but now I rather like it, and
never know whether it blows or not in the night, I sleep so
soundly. The noise is beyond all belief; the creaking, trampling,
shouting, clattering; it is an incessant storm. We have not yet
got our masts quite safe; the new wire-rigging stretches more than