Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/73

 I believe every word of the ‘Ancient Mariner,’ even to the slimy things that crawl on the slimy sea, for the first sea snake was wriggling about yesterday. Swimming is the only amusement for the officers and men; they caught a shark yesterday afternoon, and five minutes after, sixty of them were in the water to get a good bath before another shark came. Hot as it is, I have finished a sketch of little Douglas, which is so like your boy that I was sorry to give it away; but he is charmed with it, and has shown it, they say, to every creature in the ship, and the first lieutenant is having a frame made for it. I gave it to him to send home to his mother, who is a widow; and he is dreadfully puzzled between his wish to send it to her and a desire to offer it to Mr. Julian, one of the mates, who has adopted him, and takes care of him, and teaches him his profession.

I always rather expect to hear that the ‘Liverpool,’ by which we sent our letters from the Cape, went down at sea. She was manned by Arabs, and in a wretched state, and if our letters go to the bottom you will not know half the allusions in our subsequent valuable epistles. I think the little tortoises I sent VOL. I.