CHAPTER V.

Taking it "by and large," as the sailors say, we had a pleasant ten days'

run from New York to the Azores islands--not a fast run, for the distance

is only twenty-four hundred miles, but a right pleasant one in the main.

True, we had head winds all the time, and several stormy experiences

which sent fifty percent of the passengers to bed sick and made the ship

look dismal and deserted--stormy experiences that all will remember who

weathered them on the tumbling deck and caught the vast sheets of spray

that every now and then sprang high in air from the weather bow and swept

the ship like a thunder-shower; but for the most part we had balmy summer

weather and nights that were even finer than the days. We had the

phenomenon of a full moon located just in the same spot in the heavens at

the same hour every night. The reason of this singular conduct on the

part of the moon did not occur to us at first, but it did afterward when

we reflected that we were gaining about twenty minutes every day because

we were going east so fast--we gained just about enough every day to keep

along with the moon. It was becoming an old moon to the friends we had

left behind us, but to us Joshuas it stood still in the same place and

remained always the same.

Young Mr. Blucher, who is from the Far West and is on his first voyage,

was a good deal worried by the constantly changing "ship time." He was

proud of his new watch at first and used to drag it out promptly when

eight bells struck at noon, but he came to look after a while as if he

were losing confidence in it. Seven days out from New York he came on

The Innocents Abroad