At bed and board the passengers by the _Aquila_ on her homeward voyage had plenty of room, and the choicest morsels for everybody alike on the well spread dinner-table.
The wind was favourable, the weather was lovely.

Cheerfulness and good-humour pervaded the ship from stem to stern.

The courteous captain did the honours of the cabin-table with the air of a gentleman who was receiving friends in his own house.

The handsome doctor promenaded the deck arm-in-arm with ladies in course of rapid recovery from the first gastric consequences of travelling by sea.

The excellent chief engineer, musical in his leisure moments to his fingers' ends, played the fiddle in his cabin, accompanied on the flute by that young Apollo of the Atlantic trade, the steward's mate.