There are some ultra-nautical landsmen who will vigorously object to the first word in this day’s log, and will insist that I ought to have written “cast-off” instead; but if these individuals would go to sea they would learn that there are many expressions heard aboard ship which no argument could persuade them to use, for fear of not being considered _au fait_ in nautical nomenclature. We have all seen the horror of the pale youth with the large steam yacht when some one in his hearing has suggested going “down-stairs” instead of “below.” Yet many deep-water sailors say “down-stairs.” And one of Captain Scruggs’s characteristic orders is, “Let the fore-t’gallant-yard run down, Mr. Rarx, and tie up the sail,” instead of “Clew up the fore-t’gant’-s’l,” while he himself ordered the double main-sheet “unhooked.” To resume. For seven or eight days we have been jammed hard on the wind, and while we have made very excellent northing, we have fallen away to the eastward so much as to well-nigh overbalance our difference of latitude. In yesterday afternoon’s watch, however, the ship began to come up, and all last night we steered northwest, our course, making fairly good way, though it fell calm at daybreak, but breezed a bit again, and the yards were checked in a couple of points more at 10 +A.M.+ According to Findlay, the average time from 50° south in the Pacific to San Francisco is fifty-four days, and as we are somewhat ahead of the average since leaving that parallel, we can stand a good deal of light weather and still make a fair passage. It cannot be denied, though, that from the equator to 40° south on the other side we had a remarkable streak of bad luck; and I expect that the “A. G. Ropes,” which sailed from New York thirteen days ahead of us, will make a faster passage than we will. In parenthesis I might remark that most of the large ship-owners give their captains ten dollars per day for every day under one hundred and twenty. For instance, if a man makes the passage in one hundred and ten days, he is entitled to one hundred dollars. It may be that the curious would like to know how we passed those dreary weeks off Cape Horn, and here was our scheme, though, in truth, our habits then were about the same as they are now. I rose at seven, breakfasted at quarter to eight, and walked the poop alone till nearly eleven. On days that were very rough, it was a continual source of pleasure to chock myself off between the stern-bitts and speculate, when a particular wave was still several hundred yards off, whether it was going to break on board or whether we would clear it. It is a fascinating spectacle, this, and an hour often passed like five minutes as I gazed with ever-increasing awe at the resistless power of the huge, crested breakers.