It is a game of skill, but at the same time the uneasy motion of the ship is constantly interfering with skill; this makes it a chancy game, and the element of luck comes largely in.
We had a couple of grand tournaments, to determine who should be "Champion of the Pacific"; they included among the participants nearly all the passengers, of both sexes, and the officers of the ship, and they afforded many days of stupendous interest and excitement, and murderous exercise--for horse-billiards is a physically violent game.
The figures in the following record of some of the closing games in the first tournament will show, better than any description, how very chancy the game is.

The losers here represented had all been winners in the previous games of the series, some of them by fine majorities: Chase,102 Mrs.

D.,57 Mortimer, 105 The Surgeon, 92 Miss C.,105 Mrs.

T.,9 Clemens, 101 Taylor,92 Taylor,109 Davies,95 Miss C., 108 Mortimer,55 Thomas,102 Roper,76 Clemens, 111 Miss C.,89 Coomber, 106 Chase,98 And so on; until but three couples of winners were left.

Then I beat my man, young Smith beat his man, and Thomas beat his.