'Again, I may remark, that our meals were always served up to the minute, in the handsome services, covers, and appendages before noticed. Everything cooked with the same effectiveness and completeness in storm as in calm: fresh provisions, roasted and boiled, in fowls, mutton, pork, etc., unfailing and abundant,--pastry, puddings, and the variety of niceties, for each particular course, always ample and good of their kind; so that in speaking of the servants and cooks as part of the ship, and of the ship as a thing or creature of life, I may say that the "Royal Charter" had no consciousness of bad weather, and made no signs of complaining in storms or heavy seas. During a heavy squall, for instance, at dinner-time on this day--a fierce snow-storm for a period, the wind blowing tremendously--no effect whatever was produced on the comfort of those who sat at table; and a wine-glass I had emptied stood for many minutes entirely unsupported betwixt the protecting bars of the table, and it was only liable to be disturbed by some particular lurch which might happen to occur. Again, in regard to pitching and "sending," the action of the ship was equally remarkable, both for the easiness of the motion and the smallness of the inclination of the keel from the horizontal level. A forty-feet wave, on its entrance below the stern or counter of the ship, whilst the bow was exactly in the lowest or most depressed portion betwixt crest and crest, should raise the stern, as from the simplest view of the case it might seem, to at least its own elevation, or give an angle of inclination to the keel of about 7°; but no such measure of pitching or "sending" motion was ever observed--probably not above half as much. For, in no instance in scudding, did I ever observe the bow of the ship plunge nor the stern rise to anything like the position apparently due to the elevation of the passing waves. The action, indeed, was obviously of this nature; from the admirable adjustment of the ship's _lines_ of construction, forward and aft, the loftiest wave, on its reaching the stern-post below, exerts its lifting tendency, not abruptly or suddenly, as where the _quarters_ are heavy and the _run_ thick, but very gradually, so that the disturbing force, passing beyond the place of greatest influence before its due action is realized, becomes modified and reduced.