Although the lovely clear skies have for a while disappeared, being obscured by the most clearly defined stratus clouds that I ever saw, the weather is bracing and dry, with a sea so smooth that it never would be supposed that we were hundreds of miles from any land larger than Juan Fernandez or its neighbor, Mas-á-Fuera. Each day sees a rise of two or three degrees in the air and sea, and we are moving well up into the heart of the thirties. We will, no doubt, soon fall in with vessels from Chilean ports bound around the Horn; but those from San Francisco have been driven so far to the westward by the Trades that in this latitude they are away over in 125°. The wind is still to the northward of west, and we continue to make more easting than is desirable; because, if we have to steer much farther in towards the land, our course when we take the Trades will have to be northwest in order to cross the line in the right place, which, of course, would be dead before the wind, an undesirable position in a square-rigger, as in that event only the after-sails draw. Captain Scruggs was quite a treat at the mid-day meal, for he appeared in one of his majestic phases, when no one can tell him anything that he doesn’t already know. My wife unhappily mentioned that this would be fine yachting weather. Now, the mere mention of a yacht nearly always upsets him; and we, therefore, had to listen while he disputed vigorously with himself for some minutes; and he finally concluded with the assertion that he could take the “Volunteer” and sail right round the “Defender”; he knew the old one was better, anyhow, than that there new brass boat, or whatever she was made of. On suggesting that he might find some little difficulty in consummating such an undertaking, he replied, “Well, I’ve got that confidence in myself; I used to sail small boats when I was a boy, and I ain’t forgot how.” He concluded his remarks, always delivered in explosions as though challenging you to deny them, with a disquisition on jams. He believes in the theory that all kinds of preserves are boiled down together, and that different labels are then stuck on the tins. “Look at that, now,” he growled, pointing to one on the table. “What d’ye call that?” I showed him the device of a fig on the wrapper, with the name beneath it. “Lemme taste it,” said he, plunging a knife deep into the preserves. “There, what’d I tell you? ’Taint fig jam, it’s currants; they hain’t got the right libel onto it,” he explained. When dinner was over we repaired, as usual, to the after-cabin, while the old man strode heavily back into the dining-room, called the mate, and abruptly demanded, “Have you got that spigotti out yet?” “What’s that, sir?” asked the mate. “Spigotti, spigotti; like macaroni. Don’t you know by this time what spigotti is?” said the skipper, very angrily, for he knew that he didn’t have the name right and that we could hear him.