were the beautiful islands and islets of the Straits of Malacca. In these latitudes one of the sailors caught a booby bird. As the sun sank rose-red over the island of Sumatra vivid lightning began to play on the western horizon, and as we watched the distant storm a dark form swept along the bulwarks and silently vanished. In the brief twilight, which in these low latitudes comes and departs without ceremony, this mysterious apparition attracted considerable notice. A young person given to sentiment suggested that it was the Spirit of the Tempest hovering over us to warn us of impending doom. Whatever it might be, it seemed to have a decided penchant for hovering; it hovered sometimes within a few feet of us, mournfully flapping its long wings; after an absence of a few minutes, or moments as the case may be, it would return, as though unable to overcome the doubt it entertained of our honesty, or to resist the temptation of keeping near the ship.

Soon there was a shout forward, succeeded by a speedy solution of the matter. The mysterious Spirit of the Tempest was a booby bird; it had been taken prisoner, and was now being brought aft a miserable captive. It had fluttered around the steamer until the coloured lights were being put in their accustomed niches, and then the stupid bird, as if it were a moth and the green lantern a candle, clumsily alighted on the head of the man who had affixed the lamp. It reminded me of the gannets of Bass's Rock, but was smaller; although its body did not weigh a pound, its wings outstretched measured more than four feet. We tried the silly creature by judge and jury, tying its wings as a temporary precaution, and allowing it to flap about as best it might on the deck. The balance of evidence tended to show that the booby most righteously deserves its name, that it foolishly courts attacks that another bird would avoid, and that

it would be useless to us either for food or preservation. The sentence therefore was that the captive booby should be set at liberty. Its bonds were accordingly unfastened, and its long dark wings began to bang the deck while its outstretched head, terminated by a formidable beak four inches long, invested it with dangerous propensities in the eyes of the ladies. The booby, like the albatross, is unable to rise from the deck of its own accord; our released prisoner was therefore treated to a friendly heave by the deck officer-an act of kindness which it repaid by a vicious parting tweak from its bill.

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FOURTH ENTRY.

THE STRAITS OF MALACCA.

"Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish;
A vapour sometimes like a bear or lion.
A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock,

A forked mountain or blue promontory

With trees upon't that nod unto the world,
And mock our eyes with air."

N board ship one does not feel inclined to work hard.
The motion of the vessel, the insufficient lights

below, or the liberties taken by the wind with your papers on deck, tempt you with all manner of excuses. Before commencing your voyage you have puffed yourself up with commendable resolutions, and cumbered your baggage with formidable materials for hard work. Every traveller, I believe, does the same; and every traveller, I believe, ends by abandoning himself to unblushing indolence. For a few days you play at hide-and-seek with conscience, and in the end, persuading yourself that the heat or cold is fatal to mental exertion, lock up your papers, and take out old book acquaintances, to renew former loves and hold sweet counsel with tried friends. In the tropical seas Shakespeare

proved a most admirable deck companion, and every day at sunset the picture which opens this entry in "My Ocean Log" was hung up in Nature's artistically-lighted picture gallery.

The sunsets were quite indescribable. All too brief as they were in duration, they combined colours that no painter could imitate without being condemned as a wild dreamer. After the usual golden proclamation of approaching departure, the sun would swiftly descend into the depths, and then would begin flushes and blushes of the most delicate carmine, rose, orange, blood red, purple, and violet, tinging the fantastic shapes assumed by the clouds according to the condition of the atmosphere. The dinner bell would generally ring as we watched in silence the glorious scene, but few stirred from the deck until the final fold of the curtain of dusk had fallen. Those who had lost loved ones thought of them, associating with the spectacle the idea that the angel world must lie somewhere beyond such radiant portals. The seriously-inclined involuntarily remembered the description. of the city whose walls were of jasper, whose foundations were garnished with all manner of precious stones, whose gates were pearls, and whose streets were pure gold, as if it were transparent glass-a description, however, prefaced by the significant statement "and there was no more sea." On sea as on land, no doubt it is a beautiful world.

When we have crossed the Bay of Bengal, blue as indigo, and a good deal ruffled by the change of monsoons, we must look more closely to our courses, for upon entering the Straits of Malacca we naturally feel that another phase of the voyage opens.

From the captain of a Dutch troopship lying at Singapore, on her way from Acheen to Batavia, it was possible to obtain reply to a question which we had a couple of days

previously asked each other on passing Acheen Head, as to whether upon those beautiful highlands, so welcome to the sight after the monotony of ocean travel, the wearying war of races was still going on.

"Yes, we are fighting still," the Dutch officer said to me, "and there seems no more prospect of a termination to the campaign than there was three years ago."

On the deck, within a few yards of the bridge upon which we were standing, a Javanese lay dying; around him were other natives (soldiers and coolies), half-naked skeletons shocking to behold, stretched helpless upon the planks, gasping out the last few breathings that would convulse their spectral frames. The more fortunate took no notice of their wretched comrades, whose bodies by this time have feasted the sharks swarming in the Straits. The Malay, like the stoical Chinaman, is not frighted at death, for the sufficient reason that he takes no notice of it. By the side of an emaciated man, who actually died before I left the ship, sat a woman; and whether wife or mere companion, it must to her credit be said that, though not apparently in any mental distress, she patiently tended him, putting morsels of banana between his fevered lips. The ribs protruded through the mahogany skin, the black eyes rolled in mortal agony, but he munched on at the juicy fruit, and so munching, died.

It was a common occurrence apparently on board that ship, for it was taken by everybody as a matter of course. The blue-eyed Dutch sailors, gaunt and yellow, and each— for so the rules of the Dutch service in the East allowaccompanied through the wars by a native female companion, though delighted at the prospect of rest after the campaign, were but shadows of their former selves; their spirit had departed, their shabby blue clothes-it were an outrage to call them uniforms-hung loosely about them,