When I went down, shaking myself like a Newfoundland, Westwood was swinging in his cot with a book turned to the lamp, reading _Don Quixote_ in Spanish. "Bless me, Ned!" said he, "you seem to like it! paying fair and weathering it too!" "Only a little adventure, Westwood!" said I, laughing. "Why, here have I been enjoying better adventures than we seem likely to have," said he, "without stirring a hand, except for the wild swings you gave me from deck. Here's _Don Quixote_--" "Don Quixote be hanged!" said I: "I'd rather wear ship in a gale, myself, than all the humbug that never happened--_out_ of an infernal play-book. What's the use of _thinking_ you see service, when you don't? After all, you couldn't _expect_ much till we've crossed the Line--nothing like the tropics, or the Cape, for thickening a plot, Tom. Then there's the Mozambique, you know!" "Well, we'll see," said Westwood, lazily, and half asleep. The whole next day would have been weary enough in itself, as not a single glimpse of the fair Lota could I catch; and the weather, between the little puffs of air and squalls we had, was fit to have melted poor Ford to the bone, but for the rain. However, that day was sufficient, by fits and starts, to bring us up to the Line; and, before crossing it, which we did by six o'clock in one of the black squalls, half of the passengers had been pretty well ducked by Neptune and his gang, besides. Rare fun we had of it for three or four hours on end; the cadets and writers showing fight in a body, the Yankee being regularly keelhauled, tarred, and feathered, though I believe he had crossed the Line twice by land; while the Scotch surgeon was found out, in spite of his caution, never to have been lower than the West Indies--so he got double ration. A word to Jacobs took Westwood Scot-free; but, for my own part, wishing of course to blind the officers, I let the men stick the tar-brush in my mouth the first word I spoke, and was shaved like the mischief, not to speak of plumping afterwards behind the studding-sail curtain into three feet of water, where I absolutely saved Ford from drowning, he being as sick as a dog.