e to see him in a storm! He's
no sailor at all. His men hate him. It wouldn't be difficult to get up a
mutiny on board this ship. Richie, I understand the whole plot: he's in
want of cabin-boys. The fellow has impressed us. We shall have to serve
till we touch land. Thank God, there's a British consul everywhere; I say
that seriously. I love my country; may she always be powerful! My life is
always at her--Did you feel that pitch of the ship? Of all the names ever
given to a vessel, I do think Priscilla is without exception the most
utterly detestable. Oh! there again. No, it'll be too bad, Richie, if we
're beaten in this way.'

'If YOU are beaten,' said I, scarcely venturing to speak lest I should
cry or be sick.

We both felt that the vessel was conspiring to ruin our self-respect. I
set my head to think as hard as possible on Latin verses (my instinct
must have drawn me to them as to a species of intellectual biscuit
steeped in spirit, tough, and comforting, and fundamentally opposed to
existing circumstances, otherwise I cannot account for the attraction).
They helped me for a time; they kept off self-pity, and kept the
machinery of the mind at work. They lifted me, as it were, to an upper
floor removed from the treacherously sighing Priscilla. But I came down
quickly with a crash; no dexterous management of my mental resources
could save me from the hemp-like smell of the ship, nor would leaning
over the taffrail, nor lying curled under a tarpaulin. The sailors heaped
pilot-coats upon us. It was a bad ship, they said, to be sick on board
of, for no such thing as brandy was allowed in the old Priscilla. Still I
am sure I tasted some before I fell into a state of semi-insensibility.
As in a trance I heard Temple's moans, and the captain's voice across the
gusty wind, and the forlorn crunching of the ship down great waves. The
captain's figure was sometimes stooping over us, more great-coats were
piled on us; sometimes the wind whistled thinner than one fancies the
shrieks of creatures dead of starvation and restless, that spend their
souls in a shriek as long as they can hold it on, say nursery-maids; the
ship made a truce with the waters and grunted; we took two or three
playful blows, we were drenched with spray, uphill we laboured, we caught
the moon in a net of rigging, away we plunged; we mounted to plunge again
and again. I reproached the vessel in argument for some imaginary
inconsistency. Memory was like a