gh to assure every one within earshot that they know nothing
whatever about it; squat Finnish peasants, whose round, puffy faces and
thick yellow hair are irresistibly suggestive of overboiled
apple-dumplings; gray-coated Russian soldiers, with the dogged endurance
of their race written in every line of their patient, solid, unyielding
faces; a lanky Swede, whose huge cork hat and broad collar give him the
look of an exaggerated medicine-bottle; the inevitable tourist in the
inevitable plaid suit, struggling with endless convolutions of
fishing-tackle and hooking himself in a fresh place at every turn; three
or four pale-faced clerks on leave, looking very much as if their
"overwork" had been in some way connected with cigars and bad brandy; a
German tradesman from Vasili-Ostroff (with the short turnip-colored
moustache characteristic of Wilhelm in his normal state), in dutiful
attendance on his wife, who is just completing her preparations for
being comfortably ill as soon as the vessel starts; and a fine specimen
of the real British merchant, talking vehemently (in a miraculous
dialect of his own invention) to a Russian official, whose air of
studied politeness shows plainly that he does not understand a word of
his neighbor's discourse.

Directly we go off the rain comes on, with that singular fatality
characteristic of pleasure-trips in general, arising, doubtless, from
the mysterious law which ordains that a man shall step into a puddle the
instant he has had his boots blacked, and that a piece of
bread-and-butter shall fall (how would Sir Isaac Newton have accounted
for it?) with the buttered side downward. In a trice the deck is
deserted by all save two or three self-devoted martyrs in macintosh, who
"pace the plank" with that air of stern resolution worn by an Englishman
when dancing a quadrille or discharging any other painful duty. The
scenery throughout the entire voyage consists chiefly of fog, relieved
by occasional patches of sand-bank; and small wonder if the superior
attractions of the well-spread dinner-table detain most of our
fellow-sufferers below. What is this first dish that they offer us? _Raw
salmon_, by the shade of Soyer! sliced thin and loaded with pepper. Then
follow soup, fried trout, roast beef, boiled ditto, slices of German
sausage, neck of veal and bacon, fried potatoes and cabbage. Surely,
now, "Hold, enough!" Not a bit of it: enter an enormous plum-pudding,
which might do duty for a gl