There had been no changes in our berth. Perigal ought certainly to have been promoted, but he was not. "When the ship is paid off, I suppose that I shall be," he observed with a sigh. It was soon reported that we were ordered to the West Indies. Grey and I took an opportunity of asking Mr Johnson what sort of a country we should find out there. "One thing I will tell you, young gentlemen, you'll find it hot enough to boil your blood up a bit," he answered; "as to cooking a beefsteak on the capstan-head, that's nothing, but what do you say to finding all the fowls in the hen-coops roasted and fit for table? and all you have to do, is to hold a burning glass over a bucket of water with fish swimming about in it, and in five minutes you'll have them all thoroughly boiled." Grey and I laughed. "Well, Mr Johnson, it must be hot indeed," said I, and, though I did not exactly put faith in his account, I began to wish we had been bound elsewhere. The boatswain saw Spellman listening with mouth agape. "Hot, I believe you," he continued; "did you ever sit on a red-hot gridiron with your feet under the grate, your head in the fire, and your fists in boiling water? If you ever did, you'll have some notion of what you'll have to go through in the dog-days out in those parts." "Oh dear, oh dear," exclaimed Spellman: "why we shall all be downright roasted." "I've a notion there's some one being roasted now," observed Mr Johnson, with a wink and a curl of his nose. "Roasted! Oh dear no: all we've to do, is to sit up to our necks in casks of water, and bob our heads under every now and then. To be sure, there is a fear that we may all turn into blackamoors, but that is nothing when a man gets accustomed to it. I don't see why a dark skin should not be as good as a white one. Though they don't all talk the same lingo, they've as much sense in their woolly heads as white men, that's my opinion; and so, young gentlemen, when you get among them out there, just treat them as if they were of the same nature as yourselves, and you'll find that they will behave well to you, and will be faithful and true." Mr Johnson's remarks were interrupted by the appearance of Toby Bluff, who came to summon him on deck. Blue Peter was flying from aloft. In ten minutes afterwards the capstan-bars were manned, the merry pipe was heard, and, a sturdy gang of our crew tramping round, the anchor was hove up, the topsails were let fall, and away the Doris once more glided over the wide sea towards the far west. We had a rapid passage without meeting an enemy; indeed, scarcely a sail hove in sight. We made Saint Thomas's, and stood across the Caribbean Sea towards Jamaica. Hot it was, but not so hot as Mr Johnson had led us to expect. "Wait a bit," he remarked. "It's now winter; just let us see what the summer will be like."