Phew! how stuffy! I can scarcely write. In the _Borodino_ I saw that the officers, to escape the heat, slept on deck among the coal, like the crew, undressed and dirty. The beds of the officers are only distinguished from those of the crew by being mats. When I first saw this sleeping company I could hardly believe my eyes. What an unfortunate day it has been for the _Ural_! In the morning a sailor had a sunstroke, and in the evening two officers, an ensign and a lieutenant, were struck by the traveller of the Temperley,[5] which had carried away. The ensign was killed on the spot--his chest was crushed and his spine broken. There is still hope of saving the lieutenant. He received a blow on the head, and fell down unconscious; it may be he will pull through. It is a strange thing about this lieutenant. He is a Black Sea officer, and has only just come to the _Ural_. He was sent from the Black Sea at half an hour's notice to this cruiser. You see many officers in the fleet, but his Black Sea cap (all white with a peak) attracted the eye. He was on board the _Suvaroff_ an hour before the accident. They induced him to remain; he was late for his watch; but all the same, to his misfortune, he went to his ship. When he came on board us he met some comrades, told them a lot about the Black Sea fleet, abused it and its personnel. I was sitting near and was an involuntary listener. His stories interested me. Abusing the personnel, he related how three of his comrades with whom he lived made an end of their lives. "See," he said, "I lived with four comrades, and three of them have put an end to their lives, and something of the same kind will happen to me." He said this about an hour before the accident. For a few minutes before his departure I talked to him, and he told me how he had come to the _Ural_. There is a great talk in the wardroom now about the _Suvaroff_ being forbidden communication with the shore, because a sailor was absent and they made no attempt to find him. In every ship you must look out for animals--parrots, monkeys, oxen, chicken, geese, chameleons, frogs, pigs, and dogs; in a word, every sort is collected together. In one of the ships they brought a snake in the hay for the cattle. It bit an engineer in the breast, which swelled tremendously. They feared he would die. Now he is all right; the swelling has subsided. It is late; I must go and try to sleep. Haven't slept much for the last two nights. _December 31st._--There has been a great deal of talk about the sending of money to Russia for the crew. It cannot be managed. New Year's Eve is on us, but the days are so much alike that no one ever thought about it up to the present time. The sailor who had sunstroke died, and after death the temperature of his body was 43° R.