"Any omahdawn would know that, sure!" The wind hauled round more to the west-sou'-west again when we had passed the Argulhas Bank, reaching down to the southward until we were in latitude 39 degrees South; so, squaring our yards again, we preserved this parallel until we fetched longitude 78 degrees east, just below Saint Paul's Island, a distance of some three thousand miles.

We accomplished this in another fortnight after rounding the Cape; and then, steering up the chart again, we shaped our course nor'-east by north, so as to cross the southern tropic in longitude 102 degrees East.
After two or three days, we reached a warmer temperature, when the wind falling light and becoming variable we crossed our topgallant and royal yards again, spreading all the sail we could so as to make the best of the breezes we got.

These were now mingled with occasional showers of rain, as is customary with the south-west monsoon in those latitudes at this time of year, it being now well into the month of May.
For weeks past the Silver Queen had delighted the captain, and, indeed, all of us on board, with her sailing powers, averaging over two hundred knots a day, which considering her great bilge was as fast as the most famous clippers; but now that she only logged a paltry hundred or so, going but five or six per hour instead of ten to twelve, "Old Jock" began to grumble, snapping and finding fault with everybody in turns.
The men forward, too, reciprocated very heartily in the grumbling line, there not being so much for them to do as of late; and, the great marmalade question again cropping up, things became very unpleasant in the ship.
One day I really thought there was going to be a mutiny.
The men came in a body aft, headed by the carpenter, whom the captain had been rather rough on ever since he found him that morning we were off Tristan da Cunha aiding and abetting Ching Wang in his cruel cock- fighting propensities; although, strange to say, "Old Jock" seemed to condone the action of the chief offender, never having a hard word for the Chinee albeit plenty for Gregory, the carpenter.
On this eventful occasion Captain Gillespie was seated on the poop in an American rocking-chair which he had brought up from his cabin, enjoying the warm weather and wrinkling his nose over the almost motionless sails hanging down limply from the yards; and he did not disturb himself in anywise when Gregory and the others advanced from forward, stepping aft along the main-deck one by one to the number of a round dozen or more, the crowd halting and forming themselves into a ring under the poop ladder, above which the captain had fixed his chair, looking as if they "meant business." "Hullo!" cried "Old Jock" rousing himself up, rather surprised at the demonstration.

"What are you fellows doing below there ?" "We wants meat," replied the carpenter, taking off his straw hat and giving a scrape back with his left foot, so as to begin politely at any rate.

"We aren't got enough to eat in the fo'c's'le, sir, an' we wants our proper 'lowance o' meat, instead of a lot of rotten kickshaw marmalade!" "Wh-a-at--what the dickens d'ye mean ?" roared out "Old Jock," touched on his tenderest point, the word "marmalade" to him having the same effect as a red rag on a bull.