een us, were snuggled on the lee side of the longboat when Kerr
appeared. He was interested on hearing of the men who came to visit him
and said it was hard to be hounded out of Scotland, which he did not
wish to leave, for saying constitutional reforms were called for. 'I am
no worse used,' he added, 'than the man whom that county we are looking
at starved when he was among them and built monuments to him when he was
dead.' The town of Ayr was in sight and he named several of the points
Burns had named in his songs. 'Think, my laddies, of a man like Burns
being told by the officials over him to keep his Liberal views to
himself, that it was not for him to think but to be silent and obedient.
And he had to swallow their order to prevent his losing the petty office
which stood between his children and starvation.'

The breeze that had taken the brig so far down the firth soon died away,
and we rocked gently south of Ailsa Craig. In the hold folk were busy
getting things in some sort of order, while on deck the sailors were
putting everything in shipshape. This breathing spell was fortunate, for
at dark the wind came in squalls, and on rounding the Mull of Cantyre
the ocean swells sent most of the passengers to their berths seasick. I
escaped and was able to help the family and Mr Kerr, who almost
collapsed, and was not himself for a week. His first sign of recovery
was his craving for a red herring. The mistress was early up and
bustling round to find she had to face an entire change in the methods
of housekeeping to which she had been used. There was a little house
between the two masts named the galley, and here the cooking was done.
The cook was an old man, gruff and crusty, who had spent most of his
life in a Dundee whaler. In the Arctic region his good nature had got
frozen and was not yet thawed out. He would allow nobody near and got
angry when suggestions were tendered. He made good porridge and tasty
soup, anything else he spoiled. As these alone were cooked in bulk and
measured out, the passengers took to the galley the food they wished to
be cooked. That each family get back what they gave in, the food was
placed in bags of netted twine and then slipped into the coppers of
boiling water. The mistress was a famous hand at roley-poley, and for
the first Sunday after sea-sickness had gone, she prepared a big one as
a treat. It looked right and smelled good, but the first spoonful showed
it had a wonderful flavor.