HOW TO KILL TIME. 157 



menls, when we had three hundred barrels of oil 

 on board, or in our eleventh month out from home. 

 Meantime, however, we were ever in the vicinity of 

 some shore. Land was plainly in view for days 

 at a time. Either the blue mountains of Mada 

 gascar, 01 the flat, desert-like beach of the oppo 

 Bite African coast, were ever in sight. And thus 

 we drifted along, day after day, with nought but 

 the semi-occasional trick at the helm or masthead 

 to excite the sluggish blood, and relieve the con- 

 stant dullness of our monotonous lives. 



By this time I had read all the books in the 

 ship many of them treatises on mathematics, 

 political economy, and other dry and unenter- 

 taining subjects. With the lassitude inspired by 

 our lazy life, even the spirit for reading had left 

 me, and my mind refused to arouse to the consider- 

 ation of an author. Card-playing I was long ago 

 disgusted with. Sing, I could not. Stand at the 

 masthead when it was not my turn, I would not. 

 And so I, in company with two boatsteerers, took 

 to whittling as a last resort, and with the help of 

 pieces of soft wood and sharp knives, we got 

 through some weary days, and many feet of cedar 

 plank. One resource the others had, of which I 

 was deprived they chewed tobacco ; and a quid 

 engaged not only their jaws, but by sympathy 

 their minds. 



I no longer wondered at the vacant stare and 

 odd manners of the poor fellows on board the 

 Betsy Ann. Their long confinement on board 



