After breakfast this morning the mate told me how oranges are loaded at Tahiti, by hauling the vessels up under the trees which overhang the water and shaking the fruit into the hold. Already Mr. Goggins is beginning to growl at the weather. What he wants all the time is “just enough to show the sky-sails to, sir.” We had a little more wind after breakfast, it is true, but it came from the southeast and let go at ten. Last night, just before we turned in, some Mother Cary’s chickens which were flying around the ship began to utter their quaint, plaintive cries, at which Captain Scruggs and the mate shuddered and looked grave. I asked Mr. Goggins what was wrong, and he replied, “Whenever the blarsted birds cry, there’s sure to be a long spell o’ light weather.” It is strange what disdain merchant skippers have for yachting, nor can they ever understand why a man should expend so much on a vessel without trying to derive some income from the same. I happened to mention to the skipper last evening that I once chartered a pine-apple schooner at Nassau and took a party of friends on a cruise through the Bahamas. “After shells, I suppose,” quoth the worthy man, thinking that my scheme was to load up with the beautiful shells found in those islands and take them across to the mainland and sell them. Again I told him that my most cherished scheme was to navigate the South Seas in an auxiliary yacht. “Yes,” he answered, “it’s a good notion; trading ain’t dead there yet.” Perhaps the most amusing incident of this sort happened once when I was on board a yacht lying at Vineyard Haven. A large three-masted schooner came in, having lost her mizzentop-mast. The owner of the yacht pulled aboard of the schooner and looked her over, and then asked her captain and mate back to the yacht. Of course they admired her exceedingly, and as she was quite a large boat, they observed that it must cost a sight to run her. Finally, when they were about to return to their own vessel, the skipper asked, gravely and in perfect good faith, “What I don’t understand is, how do you make her pay?” Latitude, 37° 50′ north; longitude, 53° 40′ west. +May 17+