ourse, to those who take to it _con amore_, and are not compelled to
crowd all dimity to weather a lee shore and the almshouse; one where the
glorious trade wind fills the bellying canvas, and the vessel slips
quietly and swiftly along with the gentlest possible careening; without
hauling and pulling of cordage, nor heavy seas, nor heavy rains, but the
light, fleecy clouds flying gracefully overhead, the waves blue and
yielding, the watch dozing lazily in the shade, and the decks clean and
tidy--it is a pretty sight, to see a noble ship properly manoeuvred,
come swiftly up to tie wind, the sails laid rapidly aback, with lower
canvas brailed up in graceful festoons, and the buoyant hull rising and
falling on the gentle swell, like the courtesies of Cerito or Ellsler in
Sir Roger de Coverley, with all the drapery of dimity fluttering around
them. Then, again, in that blue sea of seas, the Mediterranean, where
more than half the year one may sail over level water, with none of the
ocean swell, with delightful breezes only strong enough to fan the light
and lofty sails to sleep, the shores of Italy or Spain lifting their
green-clad hills along the beam, or the ever varying islands of the
Grecian Archipelago coming and going, as you dart rapidly through their
straits. Ah! in those times, and in those seas, ships are possibly
endurable, but of all monotonies, that of shipboard is the dullest, most
wearisome and detestable.

Week after week passed away, one day like another, nothing to chronicle
save the birth of a sailor's pet in the shape of a tiny goat--taking a
shark--the usual pious Sunday homily, and on a certain occasion one Jem
Brooks, whose residence, in company with other cherubs, was somewhere
aloft in the main-top, whilst in the act of dropping a boat into the
ocean, some mishap attended the descent, and he dropped overboard
himself, thereby cracking the small bone of his leg, with a few other
trifling abrasions of skin and flesh. Iron life buoys that no one as yet
ever did comprehend the mechanism of, always fizzing off the port-fires
in broad day, and enshrouding themselves in utter darkness at night when
only needed, were instantly sent after the aforesaid Jem Brooks, who
imbued with the wit and tenacity of his species in extremis, seized one
of them, and in a short space returned pleasantly on board.

This was all that served to enliven our stupid existence. The winds
coquetted with all the perverseness of a sp