To awake in the morning, and find a large and healthy-looking tarantula squatting on your pillow within ten inches of your nose, with his basilisk eyes fixed on yours, and apparently saying, "You're only just awake, are you? I've been sitting here all the morning watching you." You know if you move he'll bite you, somewhere; and if he _does_ bite you, you'll go mad and dance _ad libitum_; so you twist your mouth in the opposite direction and ejaculate-- "Steward!" but the steward does not come--in fact he is forward, seeing after the breakfast. Meanwhile the gentleman on the pillow is moving his horizontal mandibles in a most threatening manner, and just as he makes a rush for your nose you tumble out of bed with a shriek; and, if a very nervous person, probably run on deck in your shirt. Or, to fall asleep under the following circumstances: The bulkheads, all around, black with cock-and-hen-roaches, a few of which are engaged cropping your toe-nails, or running off with little bits of the skin of your calves; bugs in the crevices of your cot, a flea tickling the sole of your foot, a troop of ants carrying a dead cockroach over your pillow, lively mosquitoes attacking you everywhere, hammer-legged flies occasionally settling on your nose, rats running in and rats running out, your lamp just going out, and the delicious certainty that an indefinite number of earwigs and scorpions, besides two centipedes and a tarantula, are hiding themselves somewhere in your cabin. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. Officers, as well as men, are allowed one half-gill of rum daily, with this difference,--the former pay for theirs, while the latter do not. CHAPTER TEN. ROUND THE CAPE AND UP THE 'BIQUE. SLAVER-HUNTING. It was a dark-grey cloudy forenoon when we "up anchor" and sailed from Simon's Bay. Frequent squalls whitened the water, and there was every indication of our being about to have dirty weather; and the tokens told no lies. To our little craft, however, the foul weather that followed seemed to be a matter of very little moment; for, when the wind or waves were in any way high, she kept snugly below water, evidently thinking more of her own convenience than our comfort, for such a procedure on her part necessitated our leading a sort of amphibious existence, better suited to the tastes of frogs than human beings. Our beds too, or matresses, became converted into gigantic poultices, in which we nightly steamed, like as many porkers newly shaven. Judging from the amount of salt which got encrusted on our skins, there was little need to fear danger, we were well preserved--so much so indeed, that, but for the constant use of the matutinal freshwater bath, we would doubtless have shared the fate of Lot's wife and been turned into pillars of salt.