The winter of our discontent is now at its height. Vainly do we endeavor to make easting; we cannot, for the wind for a long time has been at northeast instead of between north and west, as it should be. At four this morning, exasperated beyond endurance, I heard the skipper growl to the mate, “We’ll let her go round, anyway; maybe we’ll fetch Cape San Lucas.” We did make good an easterly course for a while, but at five we broke off to east-southeast, which, with the variation, was southeast three-quarters east, a preposterous course; so we went around again at eight, and are still pegging away on the starboard tack, making good north by west, and only twenty miles south of ’Frisco. Every opportunity the dour Scot has for conversation now he embraces. At seven last evening, sitting on the main-hatch, he said, “I’ll bet you never heard what ‘Long John’ (Pettersen) said to the mate one night off Cape Horn; ’twas that night when we had the worst snow-squalls. I dunno what the row was about, but Mr. Goggins called John up on the poop and began to blackguard him; then he let him have it once or twice in the face about as hard as I ever saw, and was just goin’ to kick him down the poop-ladder, when down jumps Long John on the main-deck, turns around and yells, ‘You come down here and I’ll break yer ---- ---- neck!’ and he’d ’a done it, too. What did Mr. Goggins do? Walked aft and looked into the binnacle. ‘That settles you in my mind, me buck,’ says I to meself. I don’t believe he had a right to hit John, for, if I do say so, he’s the willingest sailor I ever had to do with; but when John dared him to come down off the poop---- Well, that’s the sort o’ stuff the mate’s made of; he hasn’t got the sand of a worm. But look, sir, I want to tell ye somethin’ more about the Australian packets. The best and finest voyage I ever had in all me life was in one o’ those ships, the ‘Loch Rannoch.’” (I love to hear MacFoy roll out his sonorous Scottish names.) “We had a hundred and eighteen passengers, most o’ them, of course, in the ’tween-decks, which was fitted up wi’ bunks for ’em. Oh! but we had the fun that passage, though the rules are strict, just like in the navy, and well they need be. The emigrants can’t go either forrad or aft o’ certain limits, all lights are out at eight in the evenin’, no smokin’ after that hour, and in heavy weather none o’ them are allowed on deck. In the Southern Ocean, runnin’ our eastin’ down, the hatches were battened for two weeks, and all the air the people got was thro’ the ventilators. When such emigrants get to Melbourne they have to report at Government House, and things are fixed so they can pay their passage-money in instalments. The men are generally a pretty decent, well-conducted lot; but the women,--oh, Lord! the women! Some o’ them’s amazons, and that’s a fact. I remember one that we had on board had the whole ship in a hurrah till one day Cap’n Skene ordered her aft to talk to her. I mind the time well: the