Our deaths, as I have said, were confined to the children. The adults kept free from fever; an astonishing fact, when the confinement and closeness of a steerage birth is taken into account. The voyage was agreeable. We were good friends in the cabin. The captain, a prudent, temperate man, took his three glasses of grog per diem, and no more; the first at noon, the second at dinner, the third and last at _"turn-in_." Your obedient servant, ever mindful of your strict injunctions, and of your eloquent discourse on sobriety and self-denial, and believing that he could not do better than regulate his watch according to the captain's chronometer, followed precisely the same rule. We maintained a glorious state of health after the first week; and if all future voyagers would do the same, let them neither eat nor drink aboard ship to the full extent of their appetites. This is simple advice, but I reckon it the first great secret which my nomadic experience enables me to put down for the benefit of my fellow-creatures; especially on board of a ship, _leave off with an appetite._ We passed our time--not having the fear of the Ancient Mariner before our eyes--in shooting albatrosses, Cape pigeons, and the like; in picking up a porpoise, a bonnitta, or a dolphin. Books, backgammon, and whist, filled up the measure of the day. _Mem_.--had we been favoured with less wind, we should have got more porpoises. We speared many--_first-raters_; but the speed at which we cut along, prevented our securing them.