letter i.] THE NAVIGATOR GROUP. 



9 



blazed upon our crawling ship. The boiler tubes are giving 

 way at the rate of from ten to twenty daily, the fracture in the 

 shaft is extending, and so, partially maimed, the old ship drags 

 her 320 feet of length slowly along. The captain is continually 

 in the engine-room, and we know when things are looking 

 more unpropitious than usual by his coming up puffing his 

 cigar with unusual strength of determination. It has been so 

 far a very pleasant voyage. The moral, mental, and social 

 qualities of my fellow-passengers are of a high order, and since 

 the hurricane we have been rather like a family circle than a 

 miscellaneous, accidental group. For some time our days went 

 by in reading aloud, working, chess, draughts, and conversation, 

 with two hours at quoits in the afternoon for exercise ; but four 

 days ago the only son of Mrs. Dexter, who is the only lady on 

 board besides myself, ruptured a blood vessel on the lungs, and 

 lies in a most critical state in the deck-house from which he has 

 not been moved, requiring most careful nursing, incessant 

 fanning, and the attention of two persons by day and night. 

 Mrs. D. had previously won the regard of every one, and I had 

 learned to look on her as a friend from whom I should be 

 grieved to part. The only hope for the young man's life is 

 that he should be landed at Honolulu, and she has urged me 

 so strongly to land with her there, where she will be a complete 

 stranger, that I have consented to do so, and consequently 

 shall see the Sandwich Islands. This severe illness has cast a 

 great gloom over our circle of six, and Mr. D. continues in a 

 state of so much exhaustion and peril that all our arrangements 

 as to occupation, recreation, and sleep, are made with reference 

 to a sick, and as we sometimes fear, a dying man, whose state is 

 much aggravated by the maltreatment and stupidity of a dilapi- 

 dated Scotch doctor, who must be at least eighty, and whose 

 intellects are obfuscated by years of whisky drinking. Two of 

 the gentlemen not only show the utmost tenderness as nurses, 

 but possess a skill and experience which are invaluable. They 

 never leave him by night, and scarcely take needed rest even 

 in the day, one or other of them being always at hand to 

 support him when faint, or raise him On his pillows. 



It is not only that the Nevada is barely seaworthy, and has 

 kept us broiling in the tropics when we ought to have been at 

 San Francisco, but her fittings are so old. The mattresses 

 bulge and burst, and cockroaches creep in and out, the deck is 

 so leaky that the water squishes up under the saloon matting 

 as we walk over it, the bread swarms with minute ants, and we 



