than a sailor," yawned Tom Jerrold
when Sam Weeks roused him out of his nice warm bunk to go on duty in the
cold grey morning. "Heigh-ho, it's an awful life!"

So, it can be seen that all of us were not of one opinion in the matter.

But, in spite of sundry drawbacks and disagreeables which I subsequently
encountered, and which perhaps took off a little of the halo of romance
which at first encircled everything connected with the sea in my mind, I
have never lost the love and admiration for it which I experienced that
night in mid Atlantic when I kept the middle watch with Mr Mackay, nor
regretted my choice; neither have I ever felt inclined, I may candidly
state, to give an affirmative answer to Tim Rooney's stereotyped inquiry
every morning-- "An' ain't ye sorry now, Misther Gray-ham, as how ye
iver came to say?"

The next day, our third out from the Lizard, we spoke the barque Mary
Webster from Valparaiso for London, sixty days at sea.

She signalled that she had broken her chronometer and had to trust only
to her dead reckoning, so Captain Gillespie hove-to and gave them our
latitude and longitude, 45 degrees 15 minutes North and 10 degrees 20
minutes West, displaying the figures chalked on a black-board over our
quarter, in order that those on board the other vessel might read the
inscription easily with a glass, as we bowed and dipped towards each
other across the rolling waves, both with our main-topsails backed.

Before the following morning we had weathered Cape Finisterre, Mr
Mackay told me, having got finally beyond the limits of the dread Bay of
Biscay, with all its opposing tides and contrary influences of winds and
currents which make it such a terror to navigators passing both to and
from the Equator; and, in another two days, we had reached as far south
as the fortieth parallel of latitude, our longitude being now 13 degrees
10 minutes west, or about some five hundred miles to the eastward of the
Azores, or Western Islands.

As we worked our way further westwards I noticed a curious thing which I
could not make out until Mr Mackay enlightened me on the subject.

On my last birthday father had given me a very nice little gold watch,
similar to one which he had presented to my brother Tom, much to my envy
at the time, on his likewise obtaining his fifteenth year.

This watch was a very good timekeeper, being by one of the best London
makers; and, hitherto, had maintained an irreproachable characte