der the passengers were mostly recovering from
the mal de mer occasioned by the rough water in the Bay of Biscay. While
leaving this tiny landlocked harbor, one of the propeller blades touched
the rocky bottom, and broke short off, but our ship continued her voyage
with undiminished speed, and within three days was steaming up the Tagus
to Lisbon. Here the passengers who wished to avail themselves of the
opportunity had a few hours on shore; then we were off for the long
diagonal run across the Atlantic.

"The Lady of the Lusitania," as she was called, because there was no
other lady among the saloon passengers, was the wife of a captain in the
British army, who was going out for a few months' hunting on the pampas
of Buenos Ayres, and, of course, accompanied by many dogs, with an
assortment of guns. There was also a chaplain in the British navy who
was going out to join his ship at Valparaiso. A strange character was
he; a big, burly man, about 28 years of age, the most inveterate
champagne drinker on board, and that is saying a good deal. Whenever he
met any of the "jolly" ones of the saloon passengers it was "Come, old
fellow, will you toss me for a bottle of fizz?" as he called his
favorite wine, and he had no lack of accepters. The majority in the
saloon consisted of a party of fifteen young Englishmen, civil
engineers, who were going under the leadership of a Swedish colonel to
survey, for the Brazilian Government, a railway line across the southern
part of Brazil, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In all there were
twenty-five young men, full of frolic and fun, who made things rather
lively about the ship. They went in for everything from which any fun
could be extracted. At the equinoctial line they roped in the
"greenhorns" to look through the field glasses at the line, and having
fastened a hair across the field of view, of course, we could all see it
plainly. Father Neptune came on board and those of the crew who had
never crossed the Equator were hunted out of their hiding places,
dragged on deck, lathered with a whitewash brush dipped in old grease,
shaved with a lath-razor, and then tumbled unceremoniously backward into
a cask of water.

After a prosperous voyage of three weeks we arrived within sight of the
famous "Sugar Loaf," and were duly disembarked at the Custom House, our
baggage passed, and were off to our hotels, each going to a different
one, and each registering the name our letters of credit a