20 
SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. 
going to-bed; extraordinary in nothing else than the novel 
manner in which it is performed at sea in a gale. 
The reader will pardon me. Please step into the cabin 
of the Vancouver, and be seated by the nice little grate, 
filled with blazing coals from the mines of Paget’s Sound. 
You will perhaps amuse one eye with Tam O’Shanter, 
while with the other you explore. The six foot lawyer is 
gathering toward his berth. It is the lower one on the lar¬ 
board side of the cabin. His countenance, you will ob¬ 
serve, is in a miniature tempest. The ship rolls suddenly, 
his feet slip from under him, and he slides under the table 
accompanied by a bag of apples, a scuttle of coal, Tom 
the cabin-boy, and a hot poker! Coal, apples, and the 
law strown in indiscriminate confusion ! As one might ex¬ 
pect the lawyer extricates himself from his difficulty, enters 
a u nolle prosequi ” against further proceedings in that direc¬ 
tion, and stretches himself in his berth, without attempting 
to persuade his w T ardrobe to take separate lodgings. 
The fur-trader seems determined to undress. Accord¬ 
ingly, when the ship, in her rollings, is nearly right side 
up, he attempts to take off his coat; unfortunately, how¬ 
ever, when he has thrown it so far back as to confine his 
arms, the ship lurches heavily, and piles him up in a cor¬ 
ner of the cabin ! Odds-blood ! how his Scotch under-jaw 
smites the upper! It appears that wrath usually fights its 
battles in that part of mortality to a greater or less extent. 
On this occasion our friend’s teeth seem to have been ignited 
and his eyes set blazing by the concussion ! As, however, 
there is nothing in particular to fight but the sea, and Xer¬ 
xes has used up the glory of that warfare, the fur-dealei 
takes to his berth, without further demonstration of him¬ 
self than to say that he thinks u the devil’s tail is whisking 
in the storm,” and that u his oxfoot majesty and the fin- 
tailed god must be quarrelling stoutly about the naiads.” 
But the professor of psalmody is not to be prevented by 
these failures from unrobing himself for the embraces of 
