Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/30



Friday, November 13, Lat. 17° South.

We had the sun right over our heads at twelve o’clock to-day, and ought all to have been as shadowless as Peter Schlemihl for once in our lives, but it happened to be a cloudy day. I must own the heat is not that annoyance we were told to expect; it was troublesome a fort-night ago, for a few days, but it is really very nice weather now; and we have been going on since Monday a good steady pace, which promises to bring us to Rio on Monday or Tuesday, if we get over the danger of a calm off Cape Frio, which is a common event. We make lotteries for each place—Madeira, the Line, Rio, &c.; and seven of us put in a dollar apiece and draw a day of the week; in fact, there is nothing we do not do to try and seem amused, but we make sad failure of it. takes horrible fits of bore at times; George hardly ever, except when the wind falls and we cannot make seven knots an hour, and then he fidgets and groans. I have not seen Fanny in such good health and spirits for ages. The servants are all very contented. Rosina (the ayah) is a good merry old black thing. Chance is the