The days pass happily with me wherever my ship sails.

Captain Fisher, the commander, with a party of young ladies from the city and gentlemen belonging to his ship, came one day to pay me a visit in the midst of a deluge of rain.

Anyhow, a philosophical turn of thought now was not amiss, else one's patience would have given out almost at the harbour entrance. The term of her probation was eight days.

About midnight the fog shut down again denser than before. One could almost "stand on it." It continued so for a number of days, the wind increasing to a gale. The waves rose high, but I had a good ship. Still, in the dismal fog I felt myself drifting into loneliness, an insect on the straw in the midst of the elements.

As for myself, the wonderful sea charmed me from the first.

They made a shrewd guess that I could give them some useful information, and they were the first to meet me. Some one said they came to arrest me, and - well, let it go at that.

I once knew a writer who, after saying beautiful things about the sea, passed through a Pacific hurricane, and he became a changed man.