h sulphureous smoke--a great sea-chimaera,
chimneying and furnacing the deep; or liker to that fire-god parching
up Scamander.

Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their coy reluctant
responses (yet to the suppression of anything like contempt, to the
raw questions, which we of the great city would be ever and anon
putting to them, as to the uses of this or that strange naval
implement?) 'Specially can I forget thee, thou happy medium, thou shade
of refuge between us and them, conciliating interpreter of their skill
to our simplicity, comfortable ambassador between sea and land!--whose
sailor-trowsers did not more convincingly assure thee to be an adopted
denizen of the former, than thy white cap, and whiter apron over them,
with thy neat-fingered practice in thy culinary vocation, bespoke thee
to have been of inland nurture heretofore--a master cook of Eastcheap?
How busily didst thou ply thy multifarious occupation, cook, mariner,
attendant, chamberlain; here, there, like another Ariel, flaming at
once about all parts of the deck, yet with kindlier ministrations--not
to assist the tempest, but, as if touched with a kindred sense of our
infirmities, to soothe the qualms which that untried motion might
haply raise in our crude land-fancies. And when the o'er-washing
billows drove us below deck (for it was far gone in October, and we
had stiff and blowing weather) how did thy officious ministerings,
still catering for our comfort, with cards, and cordials, and thy more
cordial conversation, alleviate the closeness and the confinement of
thy else (truth to say) not very savoury, nor very inviting, little
cabin!

With these additaments to boot, we had on board a fellow-passenger,
whose discourse in verity might have beguiled a longer voyage than we
meditated, and have made mirth and wonder abound as far as the Azores.
He was a dark, Spanish complexioned young man, remarkably handsome,
with an officer-like assurance, and an insuppressible volubility of
assertion. He was, in fact, the greatest liar I had met with then,
or since. He was none of your hesitating, half story-tellers (a most
painful description of mortals) who go on sounding your belief, and
only giving you as much as they see you can swallow at a time--the
nibbling pickpockets of your patience--but one who committed
downright, daylight depredations upon his neighbour's faith. He did
not stand shivering upon the brink, but was a hearty thoroughpaced