If this perpetual motion hold, the cargo of cheeses we shipped at Dordrecht, flat as single Glo’sters, will be delivered in London spherical as bowls! The Jung Vrouw herself, before she reaches the Nore, will be a washing-tub! I have doubts whether the salt beef, produced at this day’s luncheon, was, originally, a round. The leathern conveniency that I brought aboard, a fair and square trunk, is already almost a portmanteau;--and, what is worse, every several morsel I have swallowed this blessed day without bliss, seems rolling itself into a bolus or a pill,--whether of opium or ipecacuanha, I leave you to divine. If the calm should continue, I may become--who knows?--a Ball myself--a Master Biffin! Every half-hour, on feeling my knees and elbows, I find joints by this friction losing some of their asperities, and getting obtuser. A little more, and I shan’t have a good point about me! Is such as this a season to be squeamishly retentive in delivering one’s sentiments? Or, rather, is not open candour inevitable; seeing that you cannot have any reserve even with the merest stranger? It is impossible to keep your feelings to yourself. In spite, then, of Britannia, the Yacht Club, the Navy Pay,--of Dibdin, Campbell, and Basil Hall,--of the Lords of the Admiralty, with Portsmouth, Devonport, and Gosport, to boot--in spite of the Royal William, nay, in spite of my very self, the truth will out!--not sneaking out, or stepping out, or backing out, but bolting out, in a plain unequivocal straightforward style. I DO envy the simple man, with his sheer ignorance about rudders and compasses. I _do_ detest and abominate the ocean--or to phrase it more mildly--the sea and I cannot agree with each other--there is sure to be falling-out between us--we can never be bosom friends. The Marine Society must despise me for it; my Elder Brethren of the Trinity House will long to dispose of me as Joseph was made _away with_ by _his_ elder Brethren; Boatswain Smith will preach, write Tracts and distribute them, against me: the Greenwich Pensioners will bind themselves by a round robin to kick me with me with their knottiest legs; Long Tom Coffin himself will be for fetching me, with a shroud in one hand, and a dead-light in the other; but I cannot eat my words. [Illustration: SEE-SAW.]