sunk between his coat-collars, 'we strikes off to the west'ard again for the hisland of Trinidad--not to soight it; but when we gits into its latitude we starboards for the south-east trades, and goes away for the Cape o' Good Hope. Are ye anything of a navigator yourself?''No,' I answered, which was true enough, though I was not so wholly ignorant of the art of conducting a ship from one place to another, as not to listen with the utmost degree of astonishment to this simple boatman's programme of the voyage to Australia.He whipped open the same locker from which he had taken the rough toilet articles, and extracted a little blue-backed track-chart of the world, which he opened and laid across his knees.'I suppose ye can read, sir?' said he, not at all designing to be offensive, as was readily gatherable from his countenance, merely putting the question, as I easily saw, out of his experience of the culture of Deal beach.Helga laughed.'Yes, I can read a little,' said I.'Well, then,' said he, laying a twisted stump of thumb upon the chart, 'here's the whole blooming woyage wrote down by Capt'n Israel Brown, of the _Turk's Head_, a wessel that was in the Downs when my mates and me agreed for to undertake this job. He took me into his cabin, and pulling out this here chart he marked these lines as you see down upon it. "There, Abraham!" he says, says he; "you steer according to these here directions, and your lugger 'll hit Sydney Bay like threading a needle."'I looked at the chart, and discovered that the course marked upon it would carry the lugger to the westward of Madeira. It was not suggested by the indications that any port was to be touched at, or, indeed, any land to be made until Table Bay was reached. The two men, Jacob and Tommy, were eyeing me eagerly, as though thirsting for an argument. This determined me not to hazard any criticism. I merely said:'I understood from you, I think, that you depend upon ships supplying you with your wants.'Abraham responded with an emphatic nod.Well, thought I, I suppose the fellows know what they are about; but in the face of that chart I could not but feel mightily thankful that Helga and I stood the chance of being transhipped long before experience should have taught the men that charity was as little to be depended upon at sea as ashore. They talked of five months, and even of six, in making the run, and who was to question such a possibility when the distance, the size of the boat, the vast areas of furious tempest and of rotting calm which lay ahead, were considered? The mere notion of the sense of profound tediousness, of sickening wearisomeness, which must speedily come, sent a shudder through me when I looked at the open craft, whose length might have been measured by an active jumper in a couple 

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