“Well, the principal thing is the pay,” he replied. “It’s a good deal better in our ships than in foreigners; and the cabin table’s generally better, too. Now, there’s the British ship ‘Fulwood’ (a fine steel ship she is), I know they don’t have soft bread on the table but once a week.” It seemed to me that this would be quite a recommendation for the “Fulwood,” for we have yet to see soft bread aboard ship much better than a worn-out sponge. But as for the wages, he is certainly right. Take the wages out of Hamburg as an example. The chief officers of the largest and fastest express steamers receive an amount equivalent to only sixty dollars of our money! What sort of remuneration is that for a man of ability, in many cases a university graduate, a man second in authority aboard a ten-thousand-ton mail steamer rippling through the most crowded ocean in the world at twenty-one knots, with fifteen hundred souls below-decks? And it makes one positively angry to think of a human being like Goggins, a densely ignorant and practically worthless creature, a person who can’t work a traverse and get the same answer twice, receiving the same amount as mate of a wind-jammer! Why, our steward, a Malay and a man of low intellect, has a good deal more than half as much wages as the first officer of the “Normannia” or “Augusta Victoria”! It is positively incredible. Latitude, 16° 14′ south; longitude, 96° 30′ west. +August 14+ Another day, beautiful beyond expression. We never remember one in all our sea experience that was as fine. The sun poured down from a sky without a shred of cloud, and the Trades, still as fresh as ever, came singing so sweetly and cheerfully over the starboard quarter, that you were moved to lean back in your chair and think, “Who is so happy as I?” Even if the weather were not so delightful, our fine progress would cover a multitude of grievances, for we have done five hundred and eighty-six miles in three days, a continuous average of eight knots. If credible, the nights are even finer than the days, and we sat late on deck last evening plunking away on the banjo, with everything steeped in the white light of the moon just past the full. So wonderfully brilliant were her beams that the shadows of the weather mizzen-rigging cast upon the immense concave expanse of the main-sail stood forth as from an arc-light. The serenity of such a night is almost unearthly. The first step in the rehabilitation of the ship for port has been progressing for two days,--the tarring down of the standing rigging. It is always the dirtiest job aboard ship, and the men are plastered from crown to toe with the sticky fluid. Next after this comes the painting, then the holy-stoning, and lastly the varnishing of what little bright work there is on the poop. [Illustration: Tarring down]