grateful to me; because he smiled upon me,
and, holding up his two filthy paws with the
pantomime of "pat-a-cake," said he should
be happy to make and cook for me any "nice
little thing."

I should be very glad to pass over my own
performances in cookery, but a few words
must be said on public grounds. I knew
nothing of the art. I had never, to the best
of my recollection, even made a dirt-pie when
a child. Not a word was said on this subject
in any of the public advertisements and
announcements of the dietary and other domestic
arrangements, if I may so express myself,
of the Rodneyrig, nor was a word breathed
on the subject by Messrs. Saltash and
Pincher. Of course I thought, as every
other intermediate passenger thought, that
we should have stewards in the ship for
duties in the way of preparing eatables
for the cook—quite as much a work requiring
skill and practice as the cooking them by the
fire. Yet here, all at once, one was required
to be a proficient, or at any rate to be able to
manage a few simple dishes. In brief, I
disgraced myself in my new occupation—spoiling
everything I touched, except the biscuits, and
subjecting myself to innumerable unpleasant
remarks, and some threats; which but for
Waits, who behaved very well, and as a
"tower of strength" to me, would probably
have been carried into condign execution.

July 6th.—Asked Arrowsmith how he
found the provisions provided for the cuddy
passengers. He said "Pretty well, considering."
He had fared much worse in some
voyages he had been. I said that was no
rule. He admitted this, and asked me what
I thought of the fare of the intermediates.
I told him just the fact. A few things
were tolerably good, and all the rest bad
—some things abominable. Biscuits were
good; salt pork was bad; salt fish abominable.
Rice was good, and flour and raisins;
preserved meat was bad, so were butter, and
pickles, and cheese, and coffee, and preserved
herrings and salt beef were abominable. The
salt beef that had been provided for the
sailors by the owners of the ship, was far
better than that provided for the intermediates
by the vile agents Saltash and Pincher. Besides
this, as bone was reckoned in our weight, it
often happened that a mess of six persons did
not receive above ten or twelve ounces of
meat among the whole of them; the remainder
being bone, fat, gristle, or sinew—in short,
the very worst parts of the beef had been
carefully selected for our use. I told Arrowsmith
I felt convinced this had been done just
because they got it cheaper. He said that
was rather a shrewd remark.

July 7th.—A sailor had a bad fall this
morning, by which he broke his head— the
back part of it, I mean—in consequence of
the rope he was pulling suddenly coming in
two. In the afternoon another sailor had a
still worse fall and injury from precisely the
same cause. Heard several sailors and
passengers agreeing that it was in consequence
of the rotten state of the ropes. Waits said
that the rigging, both below and aloft, was
rotten, and not fit for men to trust their lives
to; but that Captain Pennysage would never
allow the "boason" to give out a new piece of
rope so long as an old one could be spliced,
even though certain to break again the very
next time there was any strain upon it.
Isaac said that the captain no doubt thought
to stand well with the owners of the Rodneyrig
for this economy; or else he must be a
great rogue, and sold the new rope for his
own profit, while he made the old rope last
twice as long as it ought. He inclined, however,
to the former opinion.

July 8th.—A squall—not at all alarming.
I felt pleased to think I was in a squall
and able to remain on deck, looking about,
or sitting upon the head of a cask with
my arms folded. But presently there was a
very strange kind of sound up above, quite
different from the wind, and this was quickly
followed by a loud flapping and flanking
noise. One of the large sails had split right
across. Heard the second mate say in the
evening, that it was entirely owing to a
rotten rope which had been spliced ten or
eleven times, and that twenty pounds' worth
of canvas had been torn to rags by a saving
of a few shillingsworth of new rope. I
mentioned this to Arrowsmith. He said it was
just like Captain Pennysage; and that only
yesterday morning he, Arrowsmith, had
counted seventeen splices in the main-top-
gallant halliards.

Arrowsmith said that as we had so many
children running about the decks, there ought
to be a moveable rope railing, or some such
protection round the open hatchways, since a
fall down one of them—especially if the hold
were open at the time—would probably be
attended with fatal consequences. The lifeboat,
which lay inverted over the sheep in
the launch, had been overlaid by a number of
coils of rope and new tackles, but to this hour
had never been properly lashed fast to the
boats beneath, and to the deck. It was
therefore a wonder it had never rolled off
during some of the lurches the ship had
given in the Bay of Biscay; and if this
occurred in the day-time, the fall of such
a weight might have killed half-a-dozen
passengers. Arrowsmith said he had pointed
this out to Captain Pennysage, who answered
that it would all be done in good time—
meaning, Arrowsmith supposed, after somebody
had been killed. Then he had found
out that by some carelessness in the
arrangements, while the ship was lying in the
East India Docks, instead of the freight,
the passengers' luggage, the captain's
private stores, and the passengers' provision
stores, being all stowed in separate compartments,
they had all been lowered down and
stowed together just as they arrived, with