," to wash down biscuits,
still surplus from the "sea store." Their cooking apparatus was at first
worked by petroleum, but this speedily burned the metal out, and they
were driven to manufacture a very ramshackle sort of oil-lamp, fed by the
oil for their ship-light and their compass, and by some supplied from
passing vessels.

Two centre-boards, like long narrow doors, placed diagonally between the
web joinings of the tubes, dipped into the water, and served as a keel,
so that when we cast her off from the steamer, the raft managed to sail a
little over to windward. The whole raft being collapsible when the air
is driven out, can be readily carried aboard ship, and for this it is
valuable, but many other and better rafts compete with this for favour.

The actual _substratum_, or raft proper, seemed to be strong and
substantial, but the sails and gear were miserably contrived, and worse
executed, in preparation for a long dreary voyage of six weeks, drifting
in wet and weariness, which I could not but contrast with the pleasant
six weeks just passed in the Rob Roy.

The most interesting thing on the raft was a passenger, who had come on
board her when about a thousand miles away in the sea. This was an old
hen, given to the crew by a passing vessel. It was a common brown,
dowdy, grandmother-looking hen, and in this prosaic state it was very odd
and incongruous, tethered to the deck by a bit of tarred lanyard, and
pecking away till you looked hard at it, then it cocked up one eye with
an air that said, "Why are you staring at _me_?"

Among the visitors to the raft was a wealthy gentleman, who surveyed the
whole with interest, and at last fixed his eye upon the barn-door fowl,
and asked if it was to be sold. "Yes, sir, for a hundred guineas," was
the answer; but he deferred any immediate purchase by saying, "If I
thought that eating that hen's eggs would make me as plucky as you are, I
might buy it." As for being "plucky" in the matter, what will not men
risk for money? The risks run by many sailors in the rotten coffins that
bring our scuttles of coals round Yarmouth Sands are quite as great as
the hazard on this raft, and their forecastles are about as comfortable
as the tent upon it. If it were not on such a serious subject as risk to
human life, one might well be amused to hear the wrong estimates of the
dangers in various sorts of voyages which are so hastily expressed by
benevolent people who are ignoran