September 13 Friday – At sea on the Warrimoo, Sam’s notebook:

September 11 Wednesday – Sept. 11. We are moving steadily southward — getting further and further down under the projecting paunch of the globe. Yesterday evening we saw the Big Dipper and the north star sink below the horizon and disappear from our world. No, not “we,” but they. They saw it — somebody saw it — and told me about it. …My interest was all in the Southern Cross. I had never seen that….We saw the Cross to-night, and it is not large. Not large but strikingly bright.

September 10 Tuesday – Next Day. Sure enough, it has happened. Yesterday it was September 8, Sunday; to-day it is September 10, Tuesday. There is something uncanny about it. And uncomfortable. In fact, nearly unthinkable, and wholly unrealizable, when one comes to consider it [FE Ch. IV p.75].

September 9 Monday – FE Ch. IV p.75 denotes this day skipped for crossing the international date line.

Yesterday afternoon [Sept. 9] we passed two islands of the Horne Group — Alofa & Fortuna. On the large one are two rival native kings. There is no harbor, & the islands are not hogged by any European power. All the natives are Catholics — several French missionaries [NB 35 TS 48].

September 8 Sunday – Sam’s notebook on the R.M.S. Warrimoo:

Sept. 8. To-day’s Sunday & tomorrow’s Tuesday. It is said that Monday is dropt out because the sailors don’t like to lose their Sunday holiday — as if they couldn’t have it just as well as an ostensible Sunday as on a real one [NB 35 TS 46]

September 7 Saturday – On the R.M.S. Warrimoo, Sam’s notebook records scores from a “Sept. 7” of deck shuffleboard, this time with Sam winning’s score of 111. “There were others. The winners being reduced to 2 — Thomas & me, we played it off & he won” [NB 35 TS 45].

Shillingsburg writes,

September 6 Friday – On the R.M.S. Warrimoo, Sam’s notebook records scores from a “First Championship” of deck shuffleboard, with daughter Clara’s 109 score the winner [NB 35 TS 45].

September 5 Thursday – Sept. 5. Closing in on the equator this noon. A sailor explained to a young girl that the ship’s speed is poor because we are climbing up the bulge toward the center of the globe; but that when we should once get over, at the equator, and start down-hill, we should fly. …

Afternoon. Crossed the equator. In the distance it looked like a blue ribbon stretched across the ocean. Several passengers kodak’d it. We had no fool ceremonies, no fantastics, no horseplay [FE Ch. IV p.65-6].

September 4 Wednesday – On the R.M.S. Warrimoo. Sept. 4. Total eclipse of the moon last night. At 7.30 it began to go off. A total — or about that — it was like a rich rosy cloud with a tumbled surface framed in the circle and projecting from it — a bulge of strawberry-ice, so to speak. At half-eclipse the moon was like a gilded acorn in its cup [FE Ch. IV p.65].

The N.Y. World, p.8 ran “Twain Very Ill,” an interview datelined Vancouver, B.C, Aug. 28 [Scharnhorst, Interviews 192-6].

September 3 Tuesday – Sept. 3. In 9° 50’ north latitude, at breakfast. Approaching the equator on a long slant. Those of us who have never seen the equator are a good deal excited. I think I would rather see it than any other thing in the world. We entered the “doldrums” last night — variable winds, bursts of rain, intervals of calm, with chopping seas and a wobbly and drunken motion to the ship — a condition of things findable in other regions sometimes, but present in the doldrums always.