On this voyage we had a Mr. and Mrs. Gander and their eight children. Poor Mrs. Gander used to suffer terribly from seasickness, and was totally unfitted to do anything but scold, whilst poor unfortunate Gander used to promenade the deck with a child on each arm and a couple of others tagging on to his coat-tails. He was a wonderfully good-natured fellow, was Gander; otherwise I do believe he would have jumped overboard, for whenever he came near to where Mrs. Gander was, she used to call to him to go to the captain and tell him to put her on shore immediately; she would not go any further in that ship,—no, that she wouldn't. "Now, Mary Ann, what's the use your talking that way; you know that we are a thousand miles from any land and the captain cannot put you on shore." "Now, Gander, don't you talk to me. How dare you? You just go to the captain at once. Oh! you catch me going to sea again. No, that you won't. When I go home I'll go overland, if I have to walk every step of the way." Poor Gander! Mary Ann and the children all survived the trials of the voyage and arrived safe in Melbourne, where Gander was very fortunate, and in three years made sufficient money to enable him to retire, and as the English Mail Steamer Company, or the P. & O. Company had put on a line from Ceylon to Australia in 1852, the Gander family were enabled to go home by the overland route, as Mrs. Gander had wished to go.
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