Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/46

 have cried, and was obliged to get George to go up on deck with me, I was so headached. Then the squall began, and the wind howls as if it were the bitterest English winter’s night, when we all ‘pity the poor souls at sea,’ and yet the ship is flying on, and as steady as a church, and the poor souls at sea are able to fetch out their portfolios and begin their letters to their poor bodies of friends on shore. It is three weeks to-day since we left Rio, and we have had great varieties of weather and amusements, calms and fine sailing, and these three horrid days of what sailors call ‘a gale of wind,’ but what, in common English, and speaking correctly, we call a storm, and shocking work it is! I hope one is enough.

I have written an account of it to Mary, but I think you will like to know a clever trait of that little black angel commonly called Chance. All the dogs on board were frightened, Captain G.’s dog the worst of any, though he was bred and born at sea, and Chance was in a great twitter for a time, but after having been pitched off my bed, and then off George’s bed, he saw it was time to act with decision, so he carefully climbed up to the washhand basin (which is,