cot, or an albatros; which is not much better than a gull. We got out of Rio harbour with wonderful celerity. It is generally a tedious job, but we made eighty miles the first day, which was Saturday, the 22nd of November, and went on with great success till Thursday the 27th, when all went to wrongs. There was what they called ‘a heavy swell,’ which turned everything topsy-turvy, and that went on till Saturday afternoon, when there came on a regular gale of wind, which made the sea ten thousand times worse, carried away two of our sails, filled all the cabins with water, and, in short, was just what a gale of wind always is—the most awful and unpleasant thing in the world. And yet it was impossible to help laughing at times from the ridiculous things that happened.
As you told me to give an account of a day every now and then, that Saturday would be a good one to begin with. I had been very sick since Thursday, and had not got up, but was so tired of the noise of my own cabin that I put on my dressing-gown and rolled into George’s cabin on Saturday afternoon, and, by a lucky combination of lurches,
