DICE FOR COCKTAILS 165 



on her, and however far she rolled over you could feel 

 that she had a firm grip and was coming back. 



Still, she was inconvenient as we should think now 

 you could not get into the smoke-room from below, and 

 in bad weather had to struggle as best you could along 

 the deck to the after and only entrance. We made bad 

 weather that voyage all the way to Madeira, and two 

 nights running, while I was hanging on by the rail and 

 working my way to the smoke-room, I was caught by a 

 sea which she shipped in the waist and it came swish ! 

 up to my waist, just as I had turned the corner to the 

 smoke-room door. Needless to say, the emigrants, who 

 at that time were quartered aft, were battened down or 

 they would have been half drowned. 



Of course my advent to the smoke-room on those 

 two occasions caused much amusement, but really in 

 those days one took things as they came, and the 

 voyage after Madeira was delightful. 



It was then that I learned for the first time the 

 mysteries of poker dice, in the harmless sense of 

 throwing them for cocktails, and always before lunch 

 Captain Tindal would descend from the bridge and 

 signal to me as he passed me on deck. This meant 

 that we engaged in the hazard of the die, and I know 

 that fortune almost invariably favoured me, and in this 

 respect it has notoriously done since, as many Royal 

 Mail travellers can testify. 



It seems absurd, of course, to say that there can be 

 anything but the element of chance in throwing dice, 

 but I have noticed that those who use rough methods 

 and dump the dice-box down almost invariably fail of 

 a satisfactory result, whereas if you humour the box 

 and trickle them out with a delicate turn of the wrist 



