, from which Father Perry was the
greatest sufferer. One day he heard a laugh from the only lady on
board, who was in the adjoining stateroom. "Who can laugh at such
a time as this!" he exclaimed. He made a vow that he would never
go on the ocean again, even if the sun and moon fought for a month.
But the vows of a seasick passenger are forgotten sooner than any
others I know of; and it was only four years later that Father Perry
made a voyage to Kerguelen Island, in the stormiest ocean on the
globe, to observe a transit of Venus.

Off the coast of Spain, the leading chains of the rudder got loose,
during a gale in the middle of the night, and the steering apparatus
had to be disconnected in order to tighten them. The ship veered
round into the trough of the sea, and rolled so heavily that a table,
twenty or thirty feet long, in the saloon, broke from its fastenings,
and began to dance around the cabin with such a racket that some of
the passengers feared for the safety of the ship.

Just how much of a storm there was I cannot say, believing that it
is never worth while for a passenger to leave his berth, if there
is any danger of a ship foundering in a gale. But in Professor
Tyndall's opinion we had a narrow escape. On arriving at Gibraltar,
he wrote a glowing account of the storm to the London Times, in
which he described the feelings of a philosopher while standing on
the stern of a rolling ship in an ocean storm, without quite knowing
whether she was going to sink or swim. The letter was anonymous,
which gave Admiral Ommaney an excellent opportunity to write as
caustic a reply as he chose, under the signature of "A Naval Officer."
He said that sailor was fortunate who could arrange with the clerk
of the weather never to have a worse storm in crossing the Bay of
Biscay than the one we had experienced.

We touched at Cadiz, and anchored for a few hours, but did not go
ashore. The Brooklyn, an American man-of-war, was in the harbor,
but there was no opportunity to communicate with her, though I knew
a friend of mine was on board.

Gibraltar is the greatest babel in the world, or, at least, the
greatest I know. I wrote home: "The principal languages spoken at
this hotel are English, Spanish, Moorish, French, Italian, German,
and Danish. I do not know what languages they speak at the other
hotels." Moorish and Spanish are the local tongues, and of course
English is the official one; but the traders and co