'There is pleasant work on the R---- C---- in the evening. A select whist party takes one table, chess, draughts, and backgammon occupy another, and a jovial circle of "speculators" a third. At nine o'clock the hot water is served, when each brews his glass of toddy--baling out a wine-glass of the smoking liquor for his lady neighbour--and jollity holds sway for the remainder of the evening. Those who don't understand Hoyle--who are dummies at whist, dull at dominoes, and regularly thrown on their backs with regard to all-fours--who think draughts dry, and see no point in backgammon--generally retire to the poop after tea, to get up their little music and dancing parties, and warble and waltz gaily enough 'neath the light of the glistening stars. 'In dirty weather Our Ship is not to be altogether slighted. She rolls a good deal, I admit, but show me the vessel that doesn't. There is a polarity, too, as Mr. Emerson would say, about this rolling. See how it churns the preserved milk (there is a cow attached to Our Ship, but I think she is only a kind of stage property, for, certes, her _via lactea_ is as dry as leather), and makes a rich syllabub of the port wine. What an excuse it affords, too, for bad carving at dinner, and for becoming a sort of "shore" to the pretty young lady who sits next to you. If the lurches do empty the soup-plates occasionally in your lap, and chip the edges of the crockery until the dishes look like circular saws--if they do throw you out of your bunk at night, and land your head in the water-jug--what of that? Of course, no harm can ever come to the R---- C----, and, comforted by this conviction, all you have to do is to put up with the little annoyances for the sake of the "amenities" which, as I have shown, lurk beneath them. 'For there are some very nice girls--and with this I must conclude--journeying upon Our Ship. I like to see them in the cold morning furred up to their pretty little noses, peeping up the companion-ladders to see if the weather will admit of a walk before breakfast. I like to see them at "church" on Sundays, gathered round a pork barrel "rigged" as a pulpit, with an old Union Jack rolled up for the cushion, and hear them lifting up their voices in solemn praise across the solemn sea. It is a grand sight this last. Full service in a cathedral is nothing to it. Jack in his clean shirt, and with that same Bible in his hand which his mother gave him years ago, when his face, now hardened with brine and scarred with sleet, was the pride of the old woman's heart, is as impressive a figure to me as the finest-clad young neophyte who ever swung a censer. I know Jack sings out of tune, and ultimately swamps the Old Hundredth in the Bay of Biscay. But what matters that? Despite defects in harmony, the song of praise goes aloft in all its purity.'