University of Virginia Library

DECEMBER 15.

The wind has dwindled away to nothing. We are now so absolutely becalmed that I begin to suspect Neptune is amusing himself by making the ship take root in the ocean. I have got some locust plants on board in pots: if we get on as slowly as we have done for the last week, before we reach Jamaica my plants will be forest trees, little Jem, the cabin-boy, will have been obliged to shave, and the , black terrier will have died of old age. Great numbers of porpoises were playing about to day, and tumbling under the ship's very nose. When in their 9xambols they allow themselves to be seen above the surface, they are of a dirty blackish brown, and as ugly as heart can wish ; but in the waves they acquire a fine sea-green cast, and their spouting up water in the sunbeams is extremely ornamental.