! I had as lief run the boat with a clothes-wringer as with
that engine, any day, from then to now.

Well, we tinkered, and the Portuguese dock-yard people tinkered. We took
out this, and they took out that. It was growing sickly, and I got
frightened, and finally I shipped the propeller and took it on board,
and started under such canvas as we had left,--not much after the
cyclone,--for the North and the South together had rather rotted the
original duck.

Then,--as I wrote you in No. 11,--it was too late to get to Bahia before
that summer's sickly season, and I stretched off to cooler regions
again, "in my best discretion." That was the time when we had the fever
so horribly on board; and but for Wilder the surgeon, and the Falkland
Islands, we should be dead, every man of us, now. But we touched in
Queen's Bay just in time. The Governor (who is his own only subject) was
very cordial and jolly and kind. We all went ashore, and pitched tents,
and ate ducks and penguins till the men grew strong. I scraped her,
nearly down to the bends, for the grass floated by our side like a
mermaid's hair as we sailed, and the once swift Florida would not make
four knots an hour on the wind;--and this was the ship I was to get into
Bahia in good order, at my best discretion!

Meanwhile none of these people had any news from America. The last
paper at the Falkland Islands was a London Times of 1864, abusing the
Yankees. As for the Portuguese, they were like the people Logan saw at
Vicksburg. "They don't know anything good!" said he; "they don't know
anything at all!" It was really more for news than for water I put into
Sta. Lucia,--and a pretty mess I made of it there. We looked so like
pirates (as at bottom the old tub is), that they took all of us who
landed to the guard-house. None of us could speak Sta. Lucia, whatever
that tongue may be, nor understand it. And it was not till Ethan fired a
shell from the 100-pound Parrott over the town that they let us go. I
hope the dogs sent you my letters. I suppose there was another
infringement of neutrality. But if the Brazilian government sends this
ship to Sta. Lucia, I shall not command her, that's all!

Well! what happened at Loando the second time, Valencia, and Puntos
Pimos, and Nueva Salamanca, and Loando this last time, you know and will
know, and why we loitered so. At last, thank fortune, here we are.
Actually, Mary, this ship logged on the average only thirty-two knots a
day