inclination to larboard--as the facetious doctor observed, a "tendency to _port_." The floor gradually sloped down to the same hand, and a long, wild, gurgling wash was suddenly heard to run careering past the timbers of the starboard side. "Dear me!" fervently exclaimed every lady at once; when the very next moment the lamps went out, and all was darkness. Captain Collins felt a little hand clutch his arm in nervous terror, but the fair owner of it said nothing; until, with still more startling effect than before, in a few seconds there shot through both stern windows the full rays of the moon, pouring their radiance into the cabin, shining on the backs of the books in the hanging shelves by the bulkhead, on the faces of the party, and the bald forehead of old Jacobs "standing by" the lamp--lastly, too, revealing the pretty little Alicia with her hand on the captain's arm, and her pale, terrified face. "Don't be alarmed, ladies!" said the surgeon, "she's only hauled on the starboard tack!" "And her counter to the east," said the captain. "But who put out the lamp?" rejoined the doctor. "Ah, I see, sir!--'But when the moon, refulgent lamp of night.'" "Such a surprise!" exclaimed the ladies, laughing, although as much frightened for a moment by the magical illumination as by the previous circumstances. "You see," said the captain, "we are not like a house--we can bring round our scenery to any window we choose." "Very prettily imagined it was, too, I declare!" observed a stout old Bombay officer, "and a fine compliment to the ladies, by Jingo, sir!" "If we had any of your pompous Bengal '_Quy hies_' here though, colonel," said the doctor, "they wouldn't stand being choused so unceremoniously out of the weather side, I suspect." "As to the agreeable little surprise I meant for the ladies," said Captain Collins, "I fear it was done awkwardly, never having commanded an Indiaman before, and laid up ashore these half-a-dozen years. But one's old feelings get freshened up, and without knowing the old _Gloucester's_ points, I can't help reckoning her as a lady too--a very particular old 'Begum,' that won't let anyone else be humoured before herself--especially as I took charge of her to oblige a friend." "How easily she goes now!" said the doctor, "and a gallant sight at this moment, I assure you, to anyone who chooses to put his head up the companion." "Ah, mamma!" said one of the girls, "couldn't you almost think this was our own little parlour at home with the moonlight coming through the window on both sides of the old elm, where we were sitting a month ago hearing about India and papa?" "Ah!" responded her cousin, standing up, "but there was no track of moonshine dancing beyond the track of the ship yonder! How blue the water is, and how much warmer it has grown of a sudden!"