Nineteen days of whist

The General Grant left Yokohama at half past six in the evening on Thursday 14 November. She is a paddle steamer of the Pacific Mail Company, about two thousand five hundred tons, with three masts and a great deal of sail which she used whenever the wind allowed. Her speed was twelve knots. The distance to San Francisco is about four thousand seven hundred miles. Her captain undertook to cover it in twenty-one days. He covered it in nineteen.

Nothing happened. I mean this as the highest praise I can give an ocean. There were no storms, no breakdowns, no lost servants. The Pacific deserved its name for the whole of our crossing, which I gather is unusual, and which I put down to its never having been asked by me for anything it could not supply.

Passepartout recovered his spirits within a day, and his dignity within two. He took charge of Mrs Aouda's comfort with a zeal that left me very little to do except to be grateful. Mr Fix kept out of my way, and well out of Passepartout's.

I played whist. There was a party of three gentlemen aboard, two from Boston and a clergyman from Sacramento, who played a careful, sound, unimaginative game. I partnered the clergyman. We played every afternoon from two until six and every evening from eight until eleven. I set down the results, partly because I keep such records, and partly because Mrs Aouda asked me, with a gravity I did not entirely trust, what I could possibly have to show for nineteen days at sea.

Nothing happened. I mean this as the highest praise I can give an ocean.

Sixty-one rubbers to thirty-one. The Boston gentlemen settled at the end in good humour, which speaks well of Boston. The stakes were small and I gave my winnings to the ship's fund for distressed seamen. The clergyman gave his to the same, which I thought handsome.

I made one error worth recording, on the 25th, when I finessed against a king that was not where I placed it. I have thought about it since. I should have counted the diamonds.

We made San Francisco on the morning of Tuesday 3 December. The captain had made up two days on his own estimate. My account, on landing, stood at neither a day ahead nor a day behind. I regarded the crossing as a success in every particular except the diamonds.