A FIVE MONTHS' TRIP 



fifteen bottles of hollands, half-a-dozen bottles of rum, 

 and three or four bottles of brandy. What was the 

 greatest boon, however, was the exchange of all the 

 books we had read for the big pile his ship had finished 

 with. What a delight it was to get bread the next day 

 which was not sour ! The cook had previously tried to 

 fake up ours with potatoes and what-not, but it was 

 no good, and as he was such a good baker it was quite 

 lamentable. 



Our menus had been lacking, the sheep and chickens 

 had all gone long before, and we were down to the last 

 pig. He had been shipped as a porker from the East 

 India Docks about twelve months before, and had 

 grown enormously. The mate, a good fellow named 

 Knowles, who by the way was never happy unless 

 nursing my second boy, the present " Scout " of the 

 Express, then a little tiny chap, had an affectionate 

 regard for the pig, and would fill his pockets with 

 biscuits from the cabin table and go for'ard and feed 

 the monster himself. He would come up to me asking 

 under his breath : " Have you seen him to-day ? " 

 and I had to give a fitting reply. Sometimes when we 

 were walking up and down the weather side of the poop 

 during one of the night watches he would suddenly stop 

 and say : " I have never seen a pig grow like he has. 

 Isn't he really wonderful ? " I am certain he dreamt 

 about it. Some mornings I couldn't escape, and had 

 to watch the process of feeding. The pig knew him as 

 well as a dog would have, for there is great intelligence 

 in pigs. So it went on, the daily talk. We were 

 beginning to get out of the tropics, and one afternoon 

 we had a fine slant of wind and the weather was getting 

 perceptibly cooler. Before supper the wind had in- 

 creased from an eight to a ten knot breeze, and there 

 was every prospect of it continuing. A light overcoat 



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