Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/75



if all this is the case (and it is), I sometimes think that I might have remained in England; but there is no knowing now, how that would have been.

February 14. N. Lat. 6° 40’. There! after three more days of a burning calm, a sudden breeze sprang up yesterday; in half-an-hour the ship was running eight knots an hour, and has continued so ever since. The night was quite cool, and we are all beginning to count on arriving this day week, though that is being very sanguine. Everybody was growing melancholy about that calm; the officers had come to an end of their fresh meat, and the midshipmen to an end of their clean clothes, and they were put on a shorter allowance of water; quite enough as yet, but it was to have been shortened again at night. Rh