“No, sir, Cap’in Scruggs, sir, I’m d---- if I do,” stammered the hapless Goggins; for we could perceive the captain through a chink in the door bristled up like a ruffled bantam, and the hideous, grisly old mate, his eyes popping out like a pair of deviled kidneys, racking his brain for a translation of spigotti. But the particularly scintillating jewel in the skipper’s galaxy of remarkable pronunciations is his name for the inhabitants of Chile. They become Chilaneans; though, now that I think of it, I have heard other ship-masters put themselves to the trouble of so pronouncing it. Where do they get that extra syllable from? Now, in the case of Cubians, it’s different. They all say Cuby, so why not Cubians? It’s logical. But Chilaneans is unreasonable. Speaking of Cuba reminds me of what a Chesapeake Bay fisherman asked me once, “Hain’t Mayceo fit with the Cubians before?” This was just before Maceo was killed. Captain Scruggs seems utterly unable to avoid contradiction, and, being possessed of very uncouth manners (which he nevertheless knows quite well how to correct), it may be conceived how trying an ordeal half an hour at the table with him must be. “Don’t talk with him, then,” is very easy to say; we don’t talk between meals to him, but at table it is almost necessary to make one or two observations in thirty minutes; and whenever the silence becomes overwhelming and we hazard a remark, it is disheartening to listen continuously to “_I_ don’t _think_ so.” Latitude, 37° 3′ south; longitude 83° 20′ west. +August 5+ Just another such day as yesterday, with the sky obscured by sharply-cut, stratus clouds. The only perceptible difference is that to-day the air is a little more balmy; the wind and sea are precisely the same, and our experience so far has been that the Pacific is most aptly named. Of course we ought to be reaching smooth water now, though it is often rough in the southeast Trades; the surprising part is that we had such a quiet sea in the stormy forties. The air has been wonderfully soft all day, the thermometer indicating 58° at noon, although the sky was completely overcast. Mas-á-Fuera bore east-northeast true at mid-day, distant in round numbers one hundred miles, with Juan Fernandez two hundred miles away in about the same direction. The appearance of this latter island is said to be strikingly beautiful, though in size it is only thirteen miles by four. It consists of a series of steep, rugged hills, formed by huge boulders piled one upon the other, the loftiest reaching an altitude of three thousand feet. Palms, tree-ferns, and a thick undergrowth partially cover these rocky declivities, growing in very shallow earth, which slips away when one attempts to scale the precipices, and it is said that on this account the culminating peak has never yet been ascended.