The
wind was fair; the sun mounted into a cloudless heaven; through great
dark blue seas the ship cut a swath of curded foam. The horizon was
dotted all day with companionable sails, and the sun shone pleasantly
on the long, heaving deck.
We had many fine-weather diversions to beguile the time. There was a
single chess-board and a single pack of cards. Sometimes as many as
twenty of us would be playing dominoes for love. Feats of dexterity,
puzzles for the intelligence, some arithmetical, some of the same
order as the old problem of the fox and goose and cabbage, were
always welcome; and the latter, I observed, more popular as well as
more conspicuously well done than the former. We had a regular daily
competition to guess the vessel's progress; and twelve o'clock, when
the result was published in the wheel-house, came to be a moment of
considerable interest. But the interest was unmixed. Not a bet was
laid upon our guesses. From the Clyde to Sandy Hook I never heard a
wager offered or taken. We had, besides, romps in plenty. Puss in
the Corner, which we had rebaptized, in more manly style, Devil and
four Corners, was my own favourite game; but there were many who
preferred another, the humour of which was to box a person's ears
until he found out who had cuffed him.
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