"Have you that thing to tell you how fast you go in the ship, Mr. Belgrave?" asked the engineer. "You mean the log," replied Louis. "Yes; I mean the log; but I don't know what you call him. _La barquilla_ in Spanish." "I thought that was a little boat; but you can't learn everything from the dictionary. But you must not call the _barquilla_ either 'him' or 'her' in English, but 'it,' for we have only natural genders; and things that don't have life are neuter," said Louis, who was still assisting the young engineer to improve his English. "No!" exclaimed Felipe. "What for you call the moon a 'she'? She don't have no life. My book he say"-- "_It_ says," interposed the instructor. "It says 'the ship she sails well.' The ship don't have no life." "By a figure of speech called personification, or prosopopœia, we attribute life and action to inanimate objects," replied Louis, laughing, as he quoted from the grammar. "Now you understand it." "No!" exclaimed Felipe; and his teacher did not suppose he could take in such a sentence; but he proceeded to render it into simpler language, with a long explanation; and possibly at the end of it the pupil had some faint idea of the figure of speech. "You have not the _barquilla_?" he asked, glad to drop the grammar and rhetoric. "We have no log-line on board," replied Louis. "But I wish to know how fast the Maud is going." "We can easily ascertain that from the chart." "I don't understand," added Felipe, shaking his head. "When we are off Tarifa I will tell you just how many miles we have run," said Louis, as he consulted his watch. "We are two miles off Europa Point, and it is just half-past one. Put that down on your slate." On board of the Guardian-Mother the engineer on duty made a record of the working of the engine, just as the officer in charge of the ship commits everything to the log-slate, to be copied into the log-book; but the engineer of the Maud had not yet opened a record book. Louis wandered about the deck with nothing to do, and almost wished he had been made captain or pilot so that he might have some regular work. But Captain Scott had already ordered that the deck-hands should relieve the pilot, and he was to have two hours' work in every eight. But he seated himself with Felix in the standing-room. There was enough to see, for the shores of Europe and Africa were both in sight, and the Strait was full of vessels passing in and out. The captain joined them for a time; but his talk was mainly of tides and currents, showing that he had studied the subject very carefully. "I don't understand you, Captain Scott, much better than Felipe did me when I talked to him about personification as a figure of speech," said Louis. "Sorra one word I can mahke uv ut," added Felix; and as has been occasionally stated before, the Milesian varied his dialect to suit all the four quarters of the Emerald Isle.