can't _talk_--the sea is so full of meditation, as Lord Byron--Oh--oh--this water will be the death of me!" "I feel as if--the whole--tarnation Atlantic was--inside of my bowls!" gasped he through his nostrils. "Oh!" I could not help putting in, as the ship and Mr Snout both gave a heave up, "and coming out of you!" During all this time I had felt so sure of my ground as scarcely to trouble myself about the Bengal judge and his fairy treasure of a daughter; only in the midst of the high spirits brought up by the breeze, I hugged myself now and then at the thought of their turning out by degrees as things got settled, and my having such openings the whole voyage through as one couldn't miss in four or five months. Nobody would suspect the raw chap I looked, with smooth hair and a high collar, of any particular cue: I must say there was a little vanity at the bottom of it, but I kept thinking more and more how snug and quietly I'd enjoy all that went on, sailing on one tack with the passengers and the old Nabob himself, and slipping off upon the other when I could come near the charming young Lota. The notion looks more like what some scamp of a reefer, cruising ashore, would have hit upon, than suits my taste now-a-days; but the cockpit had put a spice of the imp in me, which I never got clear of till this very voyage, as you shall see, if we get through with the log of it. 'Twas no use, as I found, saying what one should have to do, except put _heart_ into it,--with wind, sea, and a love affair to manage all at once, after making a tangled coil instead of one all clear and above-board. The first time I went down into the cuddy was that evening to tea, where all was at sixes and sevens like the decks; the lamps ill trimmed, stewards out of the way, and a few lads trying to bear up against their stomachs by the help of brandy and biscuits. The main figure was a jolly-looking East Indian, an indigo-planter as he turned out, with a bald forehead, a hook nose, and his gills covered with white whiskers that gave him all the cut of a cockatoo. He had his brown servant running about on every hand, and, being an old stager, did his best to cheer up the rest; but nothing I saw showed the least sign of the party I looked after. I was sure I ought to have made out something of them by this time, considering the stir such a grandee as Sir Charles Hyde would cause aboard: in fact, there didn't seem to be many passengers in her, and I began to curse the lying scoundrel of a _Kitmagar_ for working "Tom Cox's traverse" on me, and myself for being a greater ass than I'd fancied. Indeed I heard the planter mention by chance that Sir Charles Hyde, the district judge, had come home last voyage from India in this very Seringapatam, which no doubt, I thought, put the Mahommedan rascal up to his trick.