132 THE VOYAGE. [ch. vi. 



Nevertheless, she had already lived through five years' work, 

 in the most stormy regions in the world, under Commanders 

 Stokes and Fitz-Boy without a serious accident. When re- 

 commissioned in 1831 for her second voyage, she was found 

 (as I learned from the late Admiral Sir James Sulivan) to 

 be so rotten that she had practically to be rebuilt, and it 

 was this that caused the long delay in refitting. 



She was fitted out for the expedition with all possible 

 care : to quote my father's description, written from Devon- 

 port, November 17, 1831: "Everybody, who can judge, says 

 it is one of the grandest voyages that has almost ever been 

 sent out. Everything is on a grand scale. ... In short, 

 everything is as prosperous as human means can make it." 

 The twentv-fonr chronometers and the mahogany fittings 

 seem to have been especially admired, and are more than 

 once alluded to. 



Owing to the smallness of the vessel, every one on board 

 was cramped for room, and my father's accommodation 

 seems to have been narrow enough. 



Yet of this confined space he wrote enthusiastically, 

 September 17, 1831 : " When I wrote last, I was in great 

 alarm about my cabin. The cabins were not then marked 

 out, but when I left they were, and mine is a capital one, 

 certainly next best to the Captain's and remarkably light. 

 My companion most luckily, I think, will turn out to be the 

 officer whom I shall like best. Captain Fitz-Roy says he 

 will take care that one corner is so fitted up that I shall be 

 comfortable in it and shall consider it my home, but that 

 also I shall have the run of his. My cabin is the drawing 

 one ; and in the middle is a large table, on which we two 

 sleep in hammocks. But for the first two months there 

 will be no drawing to be done, so that it will be quite a 

 luxurious room, and a good deal larger than the Captain's 

 cabin." 



My father used to say that it was the absolute necessity 

 of tidiness in the cramped space on the Beagle that helped 

 " to give him his methodical habits of working." On the 

 Beagle, too, he would say, that he learned what he con- 

 sidered the golden rule for saving time ; i.e., taking care 

 of the minutes. 



In a letter to his sister (July 1832), he writes content- 

 edly of his manner of life at sea : " I do not think I have 

 ever given you an account of how the day passes. We 

 breakfast at eight o'clock. The invariable maxim is to 



