We had seen no land fade from view so regretfully.
It had long ago been decided in a noisy public meeting in the main cabin that we could not go to Lisbon, because we must surely be quarantined there.

We did every thing by mass-meeting, in the good old national way, from swapping off one empire for another on the programme of the voyage down to complaining of the cookery and the scarcity of napkins.

I am reminded, now, of one of these complaints of the cookery made by a passenger.

The coffee had been steadily growing more and more execrable for the space of three weeks, till at last it had ceased to be coffee altogether and had assumed the nature of mere discolored water--so this person said.

He said it was so weak that it was transparent an inch in depth around the edge of the cup.