A stowaway! Up to this moment of cruel disenchantment, my sympathies have always been with the "stowaway." I imagined him as a poor, ill-used kind of _Smike_ or _Oliver Twist_, hiding himself away among the casks in the lowest hold of the vessel, only issuing forth in the dead of night with the rats and cockroaches, who, suddenly coming to the upper deck in a terrific storm, steers the ship into a peaceful haven, saves the captain from a watery grave, and who, finally, either marries the low high admiral's daughter, or (which is more affecting) the poor stowaway mutters something about "Home," and, gratefully smiling, as he looks up at the now utterly overcome captain, dies, in the lime-light, to slow music, with his head reposing on that deeply affected officer's best epaulette. In fact, a sort of nautical "Poor _Jo_." But this idea is utterly knocked over by the appearance of the real genuine stowaway, who has such a sneaky, crawly, strangling-you-asleep appearance, that I own to a feeling of intense gratification on seeing two men rowing a small boat up alongside (for which we slack off a bit), while at the same moment the discomfited sneak with the expensive, and still mysterious, umbrella, who has descended the lowered gangway, stands on the shaky ledge below as if he were about to take a plunge--which, indeed, he does; not, fortunately for him, into the tidal river, but head foremost into the dingy, where for a second or two he lies sprawling. Regaining his legs, he steadies himself, and actually has the impudence to wave his hat to us by way of bidding us farewell, and hoping we'll have a good passage! "And," I ask of a sharp-looking little officer, who is superintending the hauling up of the ladder, "what will become of him? Can he pay those boatmen?" "Heaven knows!" is the answer, and we drop the subject as we have already dropped the miserable object. At the last he will have to give up that umbrella, worth quite a guinea, in payment for being taken ashore. And then--... alas! poor _Job Trotter_ the Stowaway! I'm afraid a good seven years is in store for him on some count or other; and, may be, that's about the best that can happen to him. The bugle-call. Bugle sounded by mysterious person in plain clothes, who, like myself, "comes out for a blow." After this he is "heard no more," until, at six P.M., he sends out his notes "_de faire part_," _i.e._, to inform the company that it is time to dress for dinner. At 6.30 he gives a good hearty blow out, cheerily announcing the last meal of the day. Then he vanishes till next morning at breakfast-time. _One o'clock._--Such a prodigal luncheon as is provided only on board ship. Most appropriate name, "Liners." At meal times we are all "liners," and very plentifully do we line. Only on board one hour, and my appetite is _Dominie Sampsonish_, _i.e._, "prodi-gi-ous!"