A day or two ago I was reading at the wheel-house door. The hour was ten in the morning, and hardly a sound was to be heard. The old man was below asleep and the mate was at work on the main-deck. Old Kelly was steering, and suddenly he leaned over and said, “Can you tell me about where she is, sir?” in a whisper. Then he went on, “I want to tell you somethin’; if ’twasn’t for you and the lady there’d be trouble in this ship.” “There has been trouble,” said I. Kelly glanced askance at me and answered disdainfully, “Ho! I don’t call _that_ trouble; that’s what you expect when you ship in a Yankee. What I mean is real trouble that begins with M. But the men, even the worst of ’em, have got such a regard for your lady for the way she behaved off Cape Horn, and all through the voyage for that matter, that they’re holdin’ in for her sake.” Whether this was said with some ulterior motive it is impossible to tell; but Kelly spoke in a calm voice as if he meant what he said. What he suggested by his mysterious M. was a word that I have never heard a sailor pronounce,--mutiny. To them it is a word too full of deadly meaning for ordinary conversation. For, generally speaking, there are only two things aboard ship,--one is duty, and the other is mutiny. All that a seaman is ordered to do is duty; all that he refuses to do is mutiny. Rarx is beginning to lose heart as well as flesh, and says that if he lives to see the Farallones he’ll surprise himself. This is unfortunate, and we are doing all we can to cheer him up. Latitude, 12° 30′ north; longitude, 124° 30′ west. +August 30+ Our course has been bad for twenty-four hours, as during the greater part of that period we steered nothing to the northward of west, and our present course would take us to Honolulu in 165°. Ships are generally forced over to 140° or 145° even under ordinary conditions, and if we do not find ourselves 20° west of San Francisco when the Trades let go, we will do well. The weather, though, is perfect; warmer certainly than in the southeast Trades, but not at all disagreeable in the shade,--about 81° at mid-day. A very acceptable change since we took this wind is that there have been no more rain-squalls. During the late Doldrums these squalls were at times practically continuous; and while the old man did finally rig up a bit of canvas, six feet by six, to serve as an awning, under which we had to crouch as though in the ’tween-decks, it was not of much use in the rain. It was extremely annoying to have to gather up the backgammon-board, two novels, a lot of sewing, a pillow, and two chairs and dash for the wheel-house half a dozen times a watch. Often the squalls lasted only two or three minutes, yet there was enough water in each shower to drench everything.