A Six Years Diary

necessitated to remain all Monday night and the whole of Tuesday, not being able to see twenty yards before us. However, on Wednesday morning, about seven o'clock, I heard the capstan heaving, preparatory to weighing the anchor. This immediately roused me; I was up, and soon on deck, but found that there was merely a slight breeze. It, however, gradually increased through the day, and we are now proceeding at a brisk rate, having passed Margate, Ramsgate, and Dover, the last-named place we did not reach till dusk; but we are now (eight o'clock) full twenty miles from it, and expect to be off Hastings before to-morrow morning. We have a very large complement of people on board, more than fifty, including sailors, independent of the passengers, who are to embark at Portsmouth. The reason of this number is, that the Captain has been obliged to take on board twenty- five boys, and leave them at the Cape, where they are to be apprenticed out to different trades. They are most of them little thieves, who have been picked up in the streets by a society in London, and thus shipped off out of further crime. There are consequently a very large live stock on board, about a hundred fowls, a large number of geese and ducks, with sheep and pigs, which, with the noise of the boys, and bawling of the sailors, make a most discordant sound. I have not yet been ill, although my companion has. We have breakfast at half-past eight o'clock, and a very substantial one it is; but it is only (w...