Fortune, as we have said, seemed to grudge every little pleasure that could have alleviated the condition of the helpless invalid on board the _Queen of Portugal_. The relief obtained from Mr Hunter, he tells us, "the gaiety of the morning, the pleasant sailing with wind and tide, and the many agreeable objects with which I was constantly entertained during the whole way, were all suppressed and overcome by the single consideration of my wife's pain, which continued incessantly to torment her." The second despatch of a messenger, in great haste to bring the best reputed operator in Gravesend recalls Murphy's words: "Of sickness and poverty he was singularly patient and under pressure of those evils he could quietly read _Cicero de Consolatione_; but if either of them threatened his wife he was impetuous for her relief." The remedies both of the Gravesend 'surgeon of some eminence,' and of yet another practitioner, who was sent for from Deal, were ineffectual; but about eight in the evening of the following day, when the ship under contrary winds, was at anchor in the Downs, Mrs Fielding fell asleep; and to that accident we owe one of the most characteristic passages in the _Voyage_. His wife's relief from pain would, Fielding tells us, "have given me some happiness, could I have known how to employ those spirits which were raised by it: but unfortunately for me, I was left in a disposition of enjoying an agreeable hour, without the assistance of a companion, which has always appeared to me necessary to such enjoyment; my daughter and her companion were both retired sea-sick to bed; the other passengers were a rude school boy of fourteen years old, and an illiterate Portuguese friar, who understood no language but his own, in which I had not the least smattering. The captain was the only person left, in whose conversation I might indulge myself; but unluckily for me, besides his knowledge being chiefly confined to his profession, he had the misfortune of being so deaf, that to make him hear my words, I must run the risque of conveying them to the ears of my wife, who, tho' in another room (called, I think, the state-room; being indeed a most stately apartment capable of containing one human body in length, if not very tall, and three bodies in breadth) lay asleep within a yard of me. In this situation necessity and choice were one and the same thing; the captain and I sat down together to a small bowl of punch, over which we both soon fell fast asleep, and so concluded the evening." In the record of the previous day, while sketching the humours of Jacks in office, Fielding incidentally shows himself as no less careful of the respect due to his wife than he was solicitous for her comfort. A ruffianly custom-house officer had appeared in their cabin, wearing a hat adorned with broad gold lace, and 'cocked with much military fierceness.' On eliciting the information that 'the gentleman' was a riding surveyor,