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I was going to kick the bucket, but I recovered so as to go on duty again about the 20th Jany. I was on duty 4 days when I was again taken and brought lower than ever. I then began to think about a hamock [sic] a round shot and salt water, but I am now again on my legs. during my sickness Mr. Payne and Lieut Cook were very kind to Me. The doctors were also very attentive and had it not been for [erased] I dont know what I would have done for he would often come and make me laugh by his odd ideas and laugh and get fat is an old saying and no doubt helped me in my case. The weather to say it was hot close and sultry would not be sufficient to express the idea. it was really burning melting suffocating weather the thermometer [?standing?] sometimes at 120 Meting [sic] the pitch out of the decks and blistering the paint work, during my sickness numbers of Men were buried and the deep voice of the boatswain calling all hands to bury the dead did not at all raise my spirits. I began to think too whilst I was sick that it was a luxury to be sick at home than to be sick any where else, when we first got to Sumatra (I had been sick some time) I felt quite well but its hot sun and want of proper food soon brought me down again, When getting well how I wished for some thing to eat. I had to confine myself to rice and tea, our bread was as hard as an oyster shell and as sour as vinegar. Our beef as salt as Lots wife and she was a pillar of salt. our pork as salty as the beef. Our water ugh it was thick and [?] and nasty and dirty and weakening and purging with waggle tails and and water devils and other long tail [crossed out: bugs} worms. ready to chaw a fellows insides up in no time to kill these varments the doctor ordered a gallon of whiskey to be put into 50 galls. of water our tea was a sort o waggle tail soup. and lay a tray of dried apples down they would all crawl off. but tis said every body has to eat their peck of dirt before they die the author of this should have added and sailors must eat their bushel of long tail worms and short horned bugs. just imagine your jaw teeth smashing down a cock roach or a grub worm sure there must be a sort of Music in the cracking of their shells, it is about 500 Miles from Quallah battoo to Singapore yet with the light winds and no winds at all we were one month going it anchoring every night in the straits and at every change of the tide in fact it was to the tide we owed our getting thro at all for it runs 2 or 3 knots, and when it favoured we would make sail when against us down anchor, we made the island of Panang which is a fine isle close to the peninsular [sic] of Malacca and has a large city on it belonging to the Eglish [sic] tis said to be a beautiful place and very pleasant. Jany 28th Anchored off the City of Malacca which is also an English City sent a boat in which boat returned with a lot of the best