ng drowned without saying a word," grumbled
Esau. "We two paid ever so much for the passage, and a pretty passage
it is."

"Oh, it'll be all right if you keep quiet; but if you get wandering
about as you do, we shall have you going right through the bulk-head,
and have to get the carpenter to cut you out with a saw."

"Wish he was as ill as I am," whispered Esau.

"Thank ye," said the man, nodding at him. "My eyes are a bit queer, but
my ears are sharp."

"Where do you suppose we are?" I said.

"Off Spain somewhere, and I dare say we shall be in smooth water before
long. Shan't be sorry for a little fresh air myself."

I was longing for it, our experience being not very pleasant down in the
crowded steerage; and I must confess to feeling sorry a good many times
that I had come.

But after a couple more days of misery, I woke one morning to find that
the ship was gliding along easily, and in the sweet, fresh air and warm
sunshine we soon forgot the troubles of the storm.

The weather grew from pleasantly warm to terribly hot, with calms and
faint breezes; and then as we sailed slowly on we began to find the
weather cooler again, till by slow degrees we began to pass into wintry
weather, with high winds and showers of snow. And this all puzzled
Esau, whose knowledge of the shape of the earth and a ship's course were
rather hazy.

"Yes; it puzzles me," he said. "We got from coolish weather into
hotter; then into hot, and then it grew cooler again, and now it's cold;
and that Mr Gunson says as soon as we're round the Horn we shall get
into wet weather, and then it will be warmer every day once more."

And so it of course proved, for as we rounded the Cape, and got into the
Pacific, we gradually left behind mountains with snow in the hollows and
dark-looking pine trees, to go sailing on slowly day after day through
dreary, foggy wet days. Then once more into sunshine, with distant
peaks of mountain points on our right, as we sailed on within sight of
the Andes; and then on for weeks till we entered the Golden Gates, and
were soon after at anchor off San Francisco.

Seventeen weeks after we had come out of the West India Docks, and every
one said we had had a capital passage, and I suppose it was; but we
passed through a very dreary time, and it is impossible to describe the
feeling of delight that took possession of us as we looked from the deck
at the bright, busy-looking city, with its forest of masts,