or even preferred to, Naples. The night,
however, was falling fast, and, worse still, a perfect down-pour of rain
was falling with it; the sea ran high, and swept the little craft
from stem to stern; the spars bent like whips, and our single topsail
strained and stretched as though at every fresh plunge it would part
company with us altogether. No trace or outline of the coast could
I detect on any side; a deep red light appearing and disappearing at
intervals, as we rode upon or sank beneath the trough of the sea, was
all that my eye could perceive: this the dripping helmsman briefly
informed me was the "Kish," but, as he seemed little disposed for
conversation, I was left to my unassisted ingenuity to make out whether
it represented any point of the capital we were approaching or not.

The storm of wind and rain increasing at each moment, drove me once more
back to the cabin, where, short as had been the period of my absence,
the scene had undergone a most important change. Up to this moment my
sufferings and my seclusion gave me little leisure or opportunity to
observe my fellow travellers. The stray and scattered fragments of
conversation that reached me, rather puzzled than enlightened me. Of the
topics which I innocently supposed occupied all human attention, not a
word was dropped; Carlton House was not once mentioned; the St. Leger
and the Oaks not even alluded to; whether the Prince's breakfast was to
come off at Knights-bridge or Progmore, no one seemed to know, or even
care; nor was a hint dropped as to the fashion of the new bearskins
the Guards were to sport at the review on Hounslow. The price of
pigs, however, in Ballinasloe, they were perfect in. Of a late row
in Kil--something, where one half of the population had massacred the
other, they knew everything, even to the names of the defunct. A few
of the better dressed chatted over country matters, from which I
could glean that game and gentry were growing gradually scarcer; but a
red-nosed, fat old gentleman, in rusty black and high boots, talked
down the others by an eloquent account of the mawling that he, a
certain Father Tom Loftus, had given the Reverend Paul Strong, at a late
controversial meeting in the Rotunda.

[Illustration: 2-0044]

Through all this "bald, disjointed chat," unceasing demands were made
for bottled porter, "matarials," or spirits and wather, of which, were
I to judge from the frequency of the requests, the consumption must h