Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/49

 The Bristol water is invaluable, the ship water very black, and it smells vilely. I knew not before the value of good water; and, were it not for the shower bath, should be apt to wish myself where Truth is—at the bottom of a well.

Yesterday such a noise arose on deck, it brought me to the scene of action in a minute: "Come here! come here! look! look! There they go, like a pack of hounds in full cry!" I did come, and I did look; and there were some hundred of skip-jacks leaping out of the water, and following each other with great rapidity across the head of the ship. When many fish leaped up together, there was such laughing, shouting, pointing, and gazing, from four hundred full-grown people, it was absurd to see how much amusement the poor fish occasioned. I looked alternately at the fish and the people, and laughed at both.

A kind of rash teases me; in these latitudes they call it prickly heat, vow you cannot be healthy without it, and affirm that every one ought to be glad to have it. So am not I.

Having beaten about the line for a fortnight, with a contrary wind, at length we entertained hopes of crossing it, and letters were received on board from Neptune and Amphitrite, requesting to be supplied with clothes, having lost their own in a gale of wind.

July 30th.—Neptune and his lady came on board to acquaint the captain they would visit him in form the next day. The captain wished the god good night, when instantly the deck was deluged with showers of water from the main-top, while a flaming tar-barrel was thrown overboard, in which Neptune was supposed to have vanished in flame and water.

July 31st.—At 9 the private soldiers who were not to be shaved were stationed on the poop with their wives; on the quarter-deck the officers and ladies awaited the arrival of the ocean-god. First in procession marched the band, playing "God save the King;" several grotesque figures followed; then came the car of Neptune—a gun-carriage—with such a creature for a coachman! The carriage was drawn by six half-naked seamen, painted to represent Tritons, who were chained to the vehicle. We beheld the monarch and his bride, seated in the