round the table, all our expectant, sunburnt, shining faces, and eyes bright with the genuine sea-swing.
I can see once more the Captain at the head of that family table, gravely attentive to his paternal task of distribution; old Mr. Scott, equally absorbed in the sacred duties of consumption; Tom, his fair hair brushed carefully into a verandah above his bashful eyes; Fritz, chin to plate, silently ladling in enormous mouthfuls, more Germanico; Mr. Black, putting into his dealings with his dinner the same heartiness and dispatch which had secured him Mrs. Black; Mr. Anstruther, brimming over with some humorous nonsense or other: and Phil’s brown eyes readily responding to the joke. Yes, indeed! Our plates were not of porcelain; we drank from mugs, and there was no butter-knife; the tablecloth (yes, we had a tablecloth, boiled once a week in a kerosene-tin, hung on a backstay to dry, and ironed while yet a little damp, by the primitive process of being folded underneath a locker cushion and sat upon daily until wanted), our tablecloth lacked gloss perhaps, and our menu, as I have said, was limited, and strictly of a sea-going description: but not for the very choicest and most delicately served banquet ashore would I have exchanged one of those hearty reunions. “Aha! you know how to take the lee-side of the duff, I see,” Mr. Black was wont to say in friendly approval of my excellent appetite. Alas! I would be content to take but the weatherside, if it might only be again aboard the genial, the congenial Tikirau!
But now to get back to the trip. The same day that we landed the Quins, we succeeded, by a bit of rare good luck in the matter of wind, in rounding
