Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/26

 about. ‘Well, now we have got the trade; those trades are quite surprising—such luck!’

Then the next hour there comes a dead calm, which I like; for I am not sick in a calm, and by all accounts Calcutta is no pleasanter than the ‘Jupiter,’ so I like it better than tearing along till one is shaken to pieces; but everybody else gets into another fuss, and they go about, ‘Well, we have lost the trade. I don’t feel sure we ever had the real trade. I believe we are in the variables.’ Just as if it signified the least; ‘the wind bloweth where it listeth,’ and it is a mockery calling any item of our monotonous life by the name of variable. And the shocking thing is, that though I take great relief in pouring out my complaints to you in unmeasured language, yet I believe we are making an uncommonly prosperous voyage, with ten times as many comforts as most people have at sea; so what must a sea life be in general?

We are all talking eternally of those stupid ceremonies about crossing the Line; there are 112 victims, and the horror with which they look to it is not to be told; particularly some of the young ones, and also some of the