pockets, but I rather fancy that some of them will find themselves worse
off in New Zealand. When I come back, if I live to do so (and I
sometimes amass a wonderful fortune in a very short time, and come back
fabulously rich, and do all sorts of things), I think I shall try the
overland route. Almost every evening four of us have a very pleasant
rubber, which never gets stale. So you will have gathered that, though
very anxious to get to our journey's end, which, with luck, we hope to
do in about three weeks' time, still the voyage has not proved at all
the unbearable thing that some of us imagined it would have been. One
great amusement I have forgotten to mention--that is, shuffle-board, a
game which consists in sending some round wooden platters along the deck
into squares chalked and numbered from one to ten. This game will
really keep one quite hot in the coldest weather if played with spirit.

During the month that has elapsed since writing the last sentence, we
have had strong gales and long, tedious calms. On one of these
occasions the captain lowered a boat, and a lot of us scrambled over the
ship's side and got in, taking it in turns to row. The first thing that
surprised us was the very much warmer temperature of the sea-level than
that on deck. The change was astonishing. I have suffered from a
severe cold ever since my return to the ship. On deck it was cold,
thermometer 46 degrees; on the sea-level it was deliciously warm. The
next thing that surprised us was the way in which the ship was pitching,
though it appeared a dead calm. Up she rose and down she fell upon a
great hummocky swell which came lazily up from the S.W., making our
horizon from the boat all uneven. On deck we had thought it a very
slight swell; in the boat we perceived what a heavy, humpy, ungainly
heap of waters kept rising and sinking all round us, sometimes blocking
out the whole ship, save the top of the main royal, in the strangest way
in the world. We pulled round the ship, thinking we had never in our