With some copies a supplement was issued, and collectors will not need to be advised to acquire these rarities. This supplement was a page of drawings, by Mead, of common objects at Buenos Aires. The obese laundress, Mme. Maria Maggi, was perhaps conspicuous among these (on another page a report was printed that she had died, leaving £300,000 to her lean charioteer). The watchman, with a label giving one of his typical blasphemies, "Got-a-d---- b----" this, that, and the other, was seen at full length. The altercation between the manager of the wharf (attached to a balloon lettered YOU.ARE.USING.MY.BUCKETS. I.AM.THE.BANDOLIERO) and Meacock, smoking as always and nevertheless replying YOU.BIG.STIFF _ore rotundo_, was chronicled. And considering who the artist was, and his recent poem, it was not surprising to find a malevolent caricature of one still with us.
One afternoon, sleeping within my cabin, I heard the mate altering the ship's course with "Hard a starboard" and so on, and feeling this to be out of the ordinary I went out to see why. A mile off there was something in the sea, which the apprentices declared to be a small boat with a flag flying. I felt the light of adventure breaking in upon the murky tramp. But as we drew nearer, the castaway proved to be nothing more than a buoy, and visions of picking up a modern Crusoe faded suddenly. The ship was put back to her course.
The breeze ahead grew stronger, and in the early morning, the sky being quite grey, a slate-grey sea was running in sizable crests and valleys and tossing the spray high aboard. "The devil's in the wind already." "And the bread." The cook's reputation was gone at a blow. He, like a wicket-keeper, did well without any notice taken; lapsed a moment, and every one was barking. It seemed he had been unfortunate in the yeast supplied him. There were sallies of wit: "Now's the time to pave the alley," "Pass the holystone," over this doughy circumstance. For some time, in the words of the Cambridge prize poet, the bread "was not better, he was much the same," and ship's biscuits became unexpectedly favourite. They were stiff but excellent eating; would have rejoiced the soul of my late general, the noted "Admiral" H., alias "Monty," alias "The Schoolmaster," and other aliases. Can he ever be forgotten for those diurnal and immortal questions of his, "Did your men have porridge this morning?" and "Why did you not order your cook to give your men duff to-day?" It wanted little imagination to picture him under his gold oak leaves nibbling with dignity at a ship's biscuit and saying, "Very good, Harrison, uncommonly tasty--I shall recommend them to Division."