turtle-back topgallant forecastle. In
addition to the launch, the vessel carried four other boats in davits,
namely, two cutters, some thirty-five feet long, and two whaler gigs,
each about twenty-five feet long.

My companion--or hostess, rather, I suppose I ought to call her--allowed
me to stand about five minutes at the break of the poop, as I ran my eye
over the deck and noted, with many approving comments, the various items
that especially appealed to me. Then she invited me to accompany her
below.

I will spare the reader a detailed description of the apartments--I
cannot call them cabins--to which I was now conducted; suffice it to say
that, in their several ways, they were a combination of magnificence,
luxury, and comfort that seemed to me almost incredible, remembering
that I was aboard a ship.

Having duly expressed my admiration for these truly beautiful and
luxurious apartments, I was shown two other but much smaller rooms, one
on either side of the companion stairway. These two rooms occupied the
extreme fore end of the poop, and could be entered from the main-deck as
well as from the vestibule. The one on the starboard side was the
chart-room, and was fitted up with a bookshelf crammed with nautical
works of various descriptions, a table large enough to spread a good big
chart upon, a cabinet in which reposed a complete set of the most
recently published charts, a case containing no less than four
chronometers, and a cupboard wherein were securely packed a whole
battery of sextants and other instruments. The corresponding room on
the port side was fitted up as a writing room, and here the log slate
was kept and the logbook written up from time to time. Here also the
ship's clock and a very fine aneroid barometer were securely bolted to
the bulkhead, side by side, in such a position that they could be seen
from outside by merely glancing through the window. And near them, hung
in gimbals from a long bracket, was a very fine Fitzroy mercurial
barometer.

My hostess seemed genuinely gratified at the admiration which I freely
expressed, especially for the noble array of charts and nautical
instruments; these, to be quite candid, appealing to me even more
strongly than the sumptuous elegance of the drawing and dining-rooms.
She smiled brightly as I expatiated with enthusiasm upon these matters,
and when at length I paused, she said:

"Now let us go below, and I will show you the officers' and men