Our diction consisted, in about equal parts, of classical allusion, quotation from the stable, simper from the scullery, cant from the clubs, and the technical slang of heraldry.  We boasted much of ancestry, and admired the whiteness of our hands whenever the skin was visible through a fault in the grease and tar.  Next to love, the vegetable kingdom, murder, arson, adultery and ritual, we talked most of art.  The wooden figure-head of the Camel, representing a Guinea nigger detecting a bad smell, and the monochrome picture of two back-broken dolphins on the stern, acquired a new importance.  The Dutchman had destroyed the nose of the one by kicking his toes against it, and the other was nearly obliterated by the slops of the cook; but each had its daily pilgrimage, and each constantly developed occult beauties of design and subtle excellences of execution.  On the whole we were greatly altered; and if the supply of contemporary fiction had been equal to the demand, the Camel, I fear, would not have been strong enough to contain the moral and aesthetic forces fired by the maceration of the brains of authors in the gastric juices of sailors.

Having now got the ship’s literature off his mind into ours, the captain went on deck for the first time since leaving port.  We were still steering the same course, and, taking his first observation of the sun, the captain discovered that we were in latitude 83 deg. south.  The heat was insufferable; the air was like the breath of a furnace within a furnace.  The sea steamed like a boiling cauldron, and in the vapor our bodies were temptingly parboiled—­our ultimate meal was preparing.  Warped by the sun, the ship held both ends high out of the water; the deck of the forecastle was an inclined plane, on which the bullock labored at a disadvantage; but the bowsprit was now vertical and the Dutchman’s tenure precarious.  A thermometer hung against the mainmast, and we grouped ourselves about it as the captain went up to examine the register.

“One hundred and ninety degrees Fahrenheit!” he muttered in evident astonishment.  “Impossible!” Turning sharply about, he ran his eyes over us, and inquired in a peremptory tone, “who’s been in command while I was runnin’ my eye over that book?”

“Well, captain,” I replied, as respectfully as I knew how, “the fourth day out I had the unhappiness to be drawn into a dispute about a game of cards with your first and second officers.  In the absence of those excellent seamen, sir, I thought it my duty to assume control of the ship.”

“Killed ’em, hey?”

“Sir, they committed suicide by questioning the efficacy of four kings and an ace.”

“Well, you lubber, what have you to say in defense of this extraordinary weather?”

“Sir, it is no fault of mine.  We are far—­very far south, and it is now the middle of July.  The weather is uncomfortable, I admit; but considering the latitude and season, it is not, I protest, unseasonable.”