The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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The trip had done him good in spite of their passage having been an
unusually rough one, with numerous discomforts. The _Ludgate Hill_ was
not an up-to-date liner and she carried a very mixed cargo. The very
fact of her being a tramp ship and that the passengers were free to be
about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel-house, and enjoy a
real sea life, delighted Stevenson, and he wrote back to Sidney Colvin:

"I enjoyed myself more than I could have hoped on board our floating
menagerie; stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the
vast continent of the incongruities rolled the while like a haystack;
and the stallions stood hypnotized by the motion, looking through the
port at our dinner table, and winnied when the crockery was broken; and
the little monkeys stared at one another in their cages ... and the big
monkey, Jacko scoured about the ship and rested willingly in my arms ...
the other passengers, when they were not sick, looked on and laughed.
Take all this picture, and make it roll till the bell shall sound
unexpected notes and the fittings shall break loose in our state rooms,