Deck and port /

A CULPRIT.—CORPORAL PUNISHMENTS.—DIVINE SERVICE.—A BIRD.—A GALE.—GRANDEUR OF THE GULF STREAM.—MAN MISSING.—TRACTS ON BOARD.—WATER-SPOUT.—LIFE AT SEA.—AN ECLIPSE.—THE SICK-BAY.—MORAL MECHANISM OF A MAN-OF-WAR.—SPEAKING A BRIG.—DEPARTURE OF MR. BEALE.—DEATH OF SPILLIER.—ASTOR-HOUSE SAILOR.—UNIVERSALIST CHAPLAIN.—A PETREL.—SPEAKING A SHIP.—DEPARTURE OF MR. NORRIS.—CROSSING THE EQUATOR.—SOUTHERN CONSTELLATIONS.—A MAN LOST.—LAND HO!

Friday, Oct. 31. A brilliant soft atmosphere; a light breeze from the southwest; average log, three knots; sounded in thirty-six fathoms; a sand and shell bottom; exercised the men at the guns from 10 to 12 o’clock; loaded the guns a little before sunset. One of the crew, after nightfall, watched his opportunity and knocked down a marine. The aggressor is one of those hardened fellows where the hope of reformation seems to despair in its work. He was flogged but a few days since for an aggravated offense. He has cruised before, and been notorious for his bad conduct. The best thing that could be done with him would be to turn him out of the ship, but the law don’t allow this. The next best thing is to try him by a court-martial, and award him a punishment that will linger with terror in his memory. I am opposed to severity when milder measures will avail; but leniency to the incorrigible is destructive of discipline.

Corporal punishments are opposed to the spirit of the age; but he would be worthy a monument who could invent an adequate substitute on board a man-of-war. It is easy to pull down a house, but not so easy to build another on its ruins. Still the power to inflict corporal punishment is so liable to abuse, and is so often abused, I do not wonder public sentiment seems to demand its abolition. Could sailors be brought thoroughly under moral influences, it might be easily dispensed with. Virtue has motives and impulses to good conduct stronger than those ever wielded by physical force. The best obedience is that which flows from moral rectitude.

Saturday, Nov. 1. The high temperature of the water, which my boy brought me this morning for bathing, indicated that we were in the Gulf Stream. On inquiry, I ascertained that during the night we had penetrated near to its centre. This great river of the ocean holds its majestic course in seeming independence of the vast and violent elements through which it moves. Storms may howl over it, and conflicting currents fiercely assail it, but it moves on in the tranquil greatness of its unabated strength. It never stops to parley with its adversaries, proposes no terms, accepts none; but like a brave champion of truth, moves steadily to its goal. In its equanimity, its fidelity to one great purpose, and its triumph, the God of Nature utters a moral lesson in the ear of nations.

Our coursers, topsails, top-gallant, and studding-sails are set to a free, fresh wind from the southwest, and we are making ten knots the hour. Our ship has been too much by the stern, but the removal of four of her spar-deck guns from her after to her forward ports, has brought her more by the head, and she sails better. Her constructor conjectured that if deep, she would sail better by being at least fifteen inches by the head. His conjecture turns out to be correct. She is now moving through the waters as if she had an exulting pride in her occupation. I do not wonder sailors regard a fast ship as a thing of life, and speak of her with an affection applicable only to the higher attributes of humanity. She is indeed the highest triumph of human skill—the noblest representative of art.

Sunday, Nov. 2. The Sabbath. The force of the wind and the roll of the ship might have excused divine service with those disposed to find an apology for such omission. But we have commenced the cruise with the determination to have service every Sabbath when it is at all practicable. Regularity in this duty promotes regularity in every other. The discipline of a man-of-war lies in the fact that nothing is omitted that ought to be done. Besides what more appropriate for men, tost on the howling waste of the ocean, than a recognised dependence on that Being who binds the elements at his will; who can say to the rushing storm and chainless wave, hitherto shall ye come and no further, and here shall your proud strength be stayed.

Last evening a bird flew on board. He had been driven far out to sea in a gale, and now timidly sought our spars as a place of rest. No one was allowed to molest him for the night; in the morning, turning his eyes in that direction where the land lay, though some three hundred miles off, he bade us adieu and disappeared in the distant horizon. A safe passage to him and a speedy return to those left behind. He too has his home, and those there who make that home dear; and though but a bird of the wild wood, he shares the benevolent regard of One whose care extends to the falling sparrow, and who hears the young raven when it cries. If the bird whose wing is thrown on the wind to-day, and is furled in death to-morrow, may share the guardianship of the great Parent of all, much more man with his boundless sympathies and immortal hopes.

Monday, Nov. 3. The wind last night hauled several points to the east, and forced us north of our true course. We have been waiting for it to haul back, but it seems to have settled down as if determined to make itself at home in its new quarter. Well, let it stay there, if it will, and I will ponder these lines which I find inclosed in my last letter from home.

Tuesday, Nov. 4. The sun rose this morning with that look of darkness and flame which the monarch of the seasons puts on when tempests are abroad in his domain. Yet he drove his flashing chariot up the lowering steep of clouds with a fleetness and force which indicated no disposition to resign his sceptre. The glance of his eye kindled the ridges of the black masses around into lines of fire, and revealed the caverns of darkness which stretched away in their unfathomed folds. The roused ocean threw up its howling billows as if in stern defiance. It was evident we were to have a conflict of the giant elements. They rushed into the battle like foes who neither give nor crave quarter.

The roar of the tempest above, the thunder of the sea below, the careering squadrons of clouds, and the dark defiant waves, as they rushed into combat, added sublimity to terror. Our ship was not an idle spectator; she plunged into the thickest of the fight, and with wings furled and a steady keel, presented her frowning mass of exulting courage and strength; she trembled but not with fear, she wavered but not from want of valor. Wave after wave of the great ocean rolled its massive strength against her, but she met each successive shock with dauntless intrepidity. Night at last closed over the conflict, and the lightnings lit the watch-fires of the hostile squadrons. The moon broke through a rift in the black masses, and cast her soft light on the savage features of the scene. So rose she over Thermopylæ, and Waterloo, and blushed at the havoc of human ambition.

Wednesday, Nov. 5. The gale of yesterday increasing at nightfall, we sent down our fore and mizen top-gallant masts, and put our ship under close-reefed main topsail, fore storm stay-sail, fore and mizen try-sails. Thus she lay like a crouched lion. Darkness was on the face of the deep, save here and there, where a falling meteor threw its transient light on the foaming crest of some towering wave. As the soaring billow combed over, sheets of lighted foam rolled down into the intervening gulfs of night, and then succeeded a darkness that might be felt. As the heavy bell struck the hours, the voices of the watch from different parts of the ship came like broken tones from unseen sources. The hollow sound of the storm through the rigging, made it seem as if the very winds were pouring our death-dirge.

But a little after midnight the gale broke. It broke suddenly as the hope of the wicked at death. But the driving waves still remained, dark and tumultuous as the convulsions of guilt in despair. Our ship, without wind or sail to steady her, plunged blindly about. She had scarcely a dry foot of plank in her, and yet multitudes slept soundly that night. Such is life at sea. The resistless gale and the dead calm follow each other with the fickleness of an unweaned child over its toys. And proud man submits, as well he may; for he cannot help it. We are always reconciled to that which is remediless. Even death seems to lose its terrors in its inevitability.

Thursday, Nov. 6. At quarters, this morning, one of the crew, John Amey, was missing at his post. His name was called through the ship, but there was no reply. All the decks and the hold were searched, but he was nowhere to be found. He was last seen between seven and eight bells of the mid-watch. He had not been well since we left Norfolk, had complained of his head, of an oppression on the brain, and had evinced at times, in the incoherency of his remarks, symptoms of insanity. He had most undoubtedly, in a paroxysm of this disease, jumped out of one of the ports, and perished. The watch might perhaps have heard him as he fell into the water, but for the high sea that was running at the time.

He had shipped from Philadelphia, where he left a sister, of whom he often spoke with tenderness and affection. He was prompt and faithful in the discharge of his duties, and had been promised promotion. But he is now where the frowns or caresses of fortune can never reach him. His sister will long wait and watch for his return, and will long doubt in her amazement and tears the story of his death. But he has gone to that silent bourne from which nor wave, nor sail, nor mariner, has e’er returned, nor one fond farewell word traversed the waters back. He will reappear no more, till the signal trump of the archangel shall summon the sea to give up her dead. He will then, wrapped in the winding-sheet of the wave, appear at that tribunal where infinite rectitude will sit in judgment on the deeds of men.

Friday, Nov. 7. All hands were mustered this morning on the spar-deck by order of the commodore, and the untimely death of poor Amey was announced to the crew. The chaplain was called upon for such remarks as the melancholy event suggested. After briefly sketching the characteristics of the deceased, his fidelity to duty, his love for his sister, the awful malady of which he died, he told the crew that the sad event impressed one lesson with fearful force upon all, and that was the necessity of a preparation for death and the scenes that await us beyond, while life and reason remain,—that as no one knows the hour or circumstances of his death, his only security lies in that thorough preparation which no event can surprise. The crew listened with attention, as they always do on such occasions; but impressions connected with death are often transient with the sailor. His wild adventurous life is so full of tragedy, that the dead drop through it like pebbles through a stormy wave.

If you would see the most deep and wide impression that death ever produces, go to a quiet country village. You will hear it whispered from house to house, that Henry or Mary is dead! No long array of mourning-carriages darkens the street; but a silent train is there, moving in sympathy and grief to the grave. All gather around that narrow cavern, and as the coffin rumbles down to its rest, tears from the aged and the young fall thick and fast, and each, as he returns to his home, feels that a joy has been extinguished, that a light has fled from his own hearth.

Saturday, Nov. 8. Last evening, while a fine breeze was filling our sails, and the white caps were dancing under the light of the stars, a cloud was seen emerging above the bright line of the horizon. It sailed steadily up the blue cope, and at last stationed its dark distended form directly over our ship. All eyes were turned to it, expecting a storm to explode from its folds. But its contents fell in a sheet of water that instantly drenched us all, and utterly annihilated the breeze. The poor dog-vane fell motionless, as if suspended in a grave. The cloud now dissolved, the light of the stars streamed down through the radiant depths of air, and the crushed wind, like an unhorsed rider, resumed its career.

Man, when frustrated in his purposes, slowly, if ever, recovers his courage and force; but nature instantly moves on again in her exulting strength. What to her are crumbling temples and mouldering pyramids? She spreads her verdure over the ruins of nations! In her august domain empires rise and fall with as little sensation as leaves put forth and perish. She hushes the great dirge of human sorrow. Her winds waltz over the graves of ages. All are hers, and all, from the stars that tremble in the blue vault of heaven to the groves of coral which wave over the pavements of the unsounded sea, feel the pulses which throb in her mighty heart. What, then, frail man, is thy pride amid these stupendous attributes and achievements of nature?—a bubble that breaks amid the eternal thunders of the deep.

Nov. 9. Sunday, and a soft breeze from the southwest. The sparkling wave disturbs not the even tenor of our keel. Our ship swings only to the slow and solemn undulations of the ocean. No flaping sail disturbed the quietude of our worship. We sung “old hundred,” the band performing the instrumental part. How impressive on the sounding sea is that old majestic tune! It seems in harmony with the many-voiced waves around. The organ-tones of the mighty deep roll it to heaven with a fullness and power which no cathedral choir can pour from its melodious recesses. Nature through all her vast domains awakens and sustains the devotions of the human heart. Our pilgrim fathers worshipped in the sanctuary of the forest. The aisles of the deep wood rang with their hymns of gratitude and praise.

I distributed tracts to-day to the crew—to all who came to me for them; and few remained behind. It would have encouraged the hearts of those who supply these sources of salutary instruction, to have witnessed the eagerness with which our sailors took them. In a few minutes there were three or four hundred men on the decks of our ship reading tracts; each catching some thought which lures from sin, and throws its clear and tender light on the narrow path which leads to heaven.

Monday, Nov. 10. Our sweet southwest breeze still continues, and we are moving on under an easy sail seven knots the hour. There is not a greater folly on the ocean than for a man-of-war to be crowding on sail, as if speed were the all-predominant motive. This will do for a merchantman, when a market is to be reached as soon as possible; but for a national ship, bound on a three years’ cruise, it is a miserable exhibition of impatience. Indeed, in all the affairs of human life moderation is true philosophy. Our energies will give way soon enough without any forced action. A spirit of restlessness and discontent is one of the most striking faults in the American character. We rush with railroad speed even on ruin. It is as if a man on his way to the scaffold were to put his horse into a gallop.

We have been for several days past in the vicinity of water-spouts. One of them rose close upon our larboard bow. It towered through several strata of clouds, preserving through each its columnar form till its summit was lost in the sky. We attempted to near it sufficiently to bring it within the range of a cannon-ball, but it seemed to elude our approach as the rainbow the flying footsteps of childhood. Its apparent vicinity was undoubtedly one of those optical delusions so common to the phenomena of the sea. The wonders of the deep belong to their Maker. Man may survey them as a worshipper, but when he attempts to appropriate them, they fly his profane grasp, disarm him with their terrors, or overpower him with their magnificence. We filled away and were again on our course.

Tuesday, Nov. 11. This has been inspection-day. Once a month each sailor is required to exhibit his clothing to the officer who has charge of the division to which he belongs. The object of this inspection is to see that his clothes are in good condition, to see if he wants any thing further for his comfort, and to see that every article of apparel is marked with his name. In this respect sailors are to be treated as children. They require the same constant care. They are the most thoughtless, improvident beings in the world; and if left to themselves, will be, in some instances, without a decent article of clothing, and in others with their whole wages in their clothes-bag. There is no subject on which officers of the navy should exercise so much patience, and such sound paternal judgment. It is a work which brings its own reward in the consciousness of the benefits conferred.

The life of a sailor is brief enough at best. Even with all the care which you can bestow upon his habits, and with all the restraints you can exert upon his headlong career, he soon reaches his goal. You seldom meet with a grayheaded sailor. Long before age can have frosted his locks, the icy hand of death has been laid on his heart. He dies in the midst of his days, and often in his full strength. He perishes like his ship, which the tempest hath cast on the rocks. Could the wave which sepulchres his form be the winding-sheet of his soul, our solicitude for him might be less; but he has a spirit that will sing in worlds of light or wail in regions of wo, when the dirge of the deep sea is over.

Wednesday, Nov. 12. Last evening we had another tropical shower. It fell as if some atmospheric lake had burst its cloudy boundary. In a moment all exposed to it were drenched. It passed, and the moon circled up out of the sea full of mellow light. I love that orb on land, but more at sea. On shore, other objects relieve your solitude, but on the ocean it is all that seems to break the desolation which would else be universal. I have seen sailors sit and look at it by the hour. Few of them understand the laws which regulate its phenomena, but all feel its influence. Nature unrolls her treasures to the simplest of her children.

This morning a fine breeze visited us from the northwest, the first that has cheered us from that quarter. We have been on the starboard tack ever since we left Norfolk. We who occupy the larboard state-rooms, now congratulated ourselves that in the event of a blow, we should have dry quarters, and our starboard companions would take their turn at leaking ports. But this self-gratulation was hardly over, when the wind chopped about to its old quarter, and our exultation, like most exhibitions of selfish delight, proved premature. Our frigate, with a breeze that scarcely crisps the sea, knots her hundred miles a day. This, before steam began to annihilate space, would have been considered very fair travelling. But now it is a tortoise by the side of an antelope. Four bells have struck—my light must be extinguished, and I can either walk the deck or turn in for the night.

Thursday, Nov. 13th. I rise with the sun, and, like that stern old monarch, from a salt bath. Like him, too, I take another on retiring to rest. Here, I suppose, ends the resemblance between us, except that both have some spots. They who go to sea for their health should rise with the sun, bathe in salt water, and inhale the fresh atmosphere an hour before breakfast. They should also bathe before they retire to rest. Salt water, the chafing towel, and fresh air, are the restoratives most to be relied on, and the very restoratives which a lazy invalid will first neglect. Were I to omit these, I should hardly live long enough to reach our next port. The invalid should confine himself to a spare diet, and take no stimulants. His only tonic should be the pure salt atmosphere of the sea. Wine, brandy, and porter are sufficiently injurious on land, but at sea they carry disease and death in their train.

We have had this evening an eclipse of the moon; only a narrow rim of the orb escaped the dark shadow of our earth. Our sailors, not anticipating this eclipse, could not at first account for the disappearing light. They saw the slender spars and tracery of the ship becoming momentarily less distinct and visible, but knew not from whence the shadow fell. A few of them, better versed in lunar observations, explained to the rest the phenomenon. They said the earth had shoved a part of her black hull between us and the moon. But when asked why she had done this, the reason assigned was, that the moon had probably got a little out of her reckoning, and in attempting to tack had missed stays.

Friday, Nov. 14. We have now been fourteen days at sea, and have sailed eighteen hundred miles. A vast sheet of water spreads between us and our homes, but a greater between us and our port of destination. Our fresh provisions still hold out, but the appearance of a junk of corned beef on our table every day indicates the gradual approach of short commons. Still it will be some time before we reach that last dish of gastronomic desperation—lobscouse. We have an experienced caterer, a provident steward, and an ingenious cook. With the three we feel pretty safe. I have been at sea in four or five national ships, and have never found in any, after the second week out, a table so well supplied as ours. Still our variety is effected in a great measure by the ingenuity of our steward and cook.

The culinary art is forced into its highest degree of perfection, and achieves its last triumph at sea. The cook, who, in a Parisian restaurant, can make a palatable soup from the carcass of a crow that has perished of inanition, is entitled to but little praise in comparison with him who can raise a good soup at sea after the third week out. The nautical cook has seemingly nothing left for his pot but the recollections of his coop. Recollections make very good poetry, but they simmer badly into a soup. The attenuation is too fine even for homœopathic gastronomy. It would do, perhaps, for Bishop Berkeley’s ideal world. I rather think the worthy bishop must have formed that theory at sea after the third week out. It certainly suits man in that condition. The unstableness of a thing entitles it to faith.

Saturday, Nov. 15. To-day our ship has been holystoned from stem to stern. A person who has stood in the silent excavations of Herculaneum, and heard the carriages rattling overhead, can have some idea of the sounds which those rumbling stones produce on the decks of a ship. The whole ship is converted into a floating Babel, and worse indeed, unless the strokes of the gravel be comprehended in the vocal jargon of the tower. But we shall have our compensation for this in decks so clean that a handkerchief might be swept over them without soiling its whiteness.

Nothing on board a man-of-war requires such unremitted attention as cleanliness. It puts to the last test the most indomitable purpose. Without it, a ship soon becomes intolerable. Without it, sickness would ensue; some epidemic would sweep half the crew to the grave. And yet nine-tenths of our sailors are so inconsiderate, that if left to themselves they would exercise no precautions on the subject. This renders the most careful supervision of officers indispensable. Negligence in this department soils every laurel he can win on the deck. It is like that louse which Burns saw climbing up a lady’s bonnet in church. This allusion reminds one of an anecdote related of Lord Byron and Lady Blessington. Her ladyship had taken something that the poet had said in high dudgeon, but dismissed it with the fling that she “didn’t care three skips of a louse for his lordship.” To which the sarcastic poet retorted in the couplet—

Sunday, Nov. 16. The Sabbath has returned, and we have had divine service. Last night we discovered a sail on our starboard bow, close hauled upon her wind. This morning we tacked ship and brought her to. She proved to be a brig from Norfolk, bound to Rio de Janeiro. She had been fifty-two days out, with light head winds. We wished the captain a pleasant voyage, and parted company. We were in hopes she might prove a craft bound to some port in the United States, and that she would take letters back from us. We were disappointed; our friends must wait for letters from our port of destination. It will probably be six months from our departure before they will get a line from us.

You who cannot leave your wives and children for a week, without intelligence from them, go to sea with the prospect that we have, of not hearing from them for a year. The truth is, none but old bachelors and hen-pecked husbands should go to sea. The latter flies from persecution, the former from that wretchedness which a sight of real domestic happiness inflicts. The bliss of Eden made even Satan more wretched than he was before. But the ocean is itself a rich domain. The treasures of empires lie in its depths. The wrecks of the richest argosies are hers; and her waves roll over the unsurrendered forms of matchless beauty. She gives back nought that comes within her vast embrace. Her great seal of proprietorship will be broken only by the thunders of the last trump.

Monday, Nov. 17. Our ship has been tantalized all day with a light head wind—just one of those winds that are but little better than none; the only advantage it has over a dead calm is the air it affords. As for progress, we might as well be

How dependent is a ship on the elements! Let the winds refuse to visit us, and this noble frigate would never move from her present position; she would rot down piece-meal where she is now lying, with the bleaching bones of five hundred men on her decks. But the winds are at the bidding of Him whose pavilion is in the clouds, and whose mandates are nature’s resistless law. May we ever live in humble submission to His will, and rejoice that He reigns; feeling fully assured that His measures are dictated by infinite wisdom, and by an unerring regard to the happiness of His creatures.

I found in the sick-bay to-day a patient laboring under a typhoid fever, and apparently near his end. He spoke to me of his mother and his sisters, and tears filled his eyes. The first being that rushes to the recollections and heart of a sailor, smitten with disease at sea, is his mother. She still clings to his memory and affection in the midst of all the forgetfulness and hardihood induced by a roving life. The last message he leaves is for her; his last dying whisper breathes her name. The mother as she instills the lessons of piety and filial obligation upon the heart of her infant son, should always feel that her labor is not in vain. She may drop into her grave, but she has left behind influences that will work for her. The bow is broken, but the arrow is sped and will do its office.

Tuesday, Nov. 18. Another day of light airs. Our sails hang as pertinaciously to our masts as a veil over the features of one whose imaginary beauty has touched your heart. We discovered another sail to-day over our weather bow, hull down. Conjecture makes her the Courier, which sailed from Hampton Roads two or three days before us. There is an interest in speaking a vessel at sea, which they who dwell on land can hardly realize. These nautical greetings are all that break the vast solitude of the ocean. Without them a ship would be more lonely than the solitary traveller on the desert of Sahara, for he will now and then encounter a gazelle.

A sailor’s life is one of constant privations. He makes his meals from bread which the hammer can scarcely break, and from meat often as juiceless and dry as the bones which it feebly covers. The fresh products of the garden and the fruits of the field have all been left behind. As for a bowl of milk, which the child of the humblest cottager can bring to its lips, it is as much beyond his reach as the nectar which sparkled in the goblets of the fabled divinities on Ida. When Adam went forth from his lost Eden, under the frown of God, he had still a confiding companion at his side, to share with him the sorrows of his lot, and he still found some flowers amid the briers and brambles which infested his path; but the sailor finds no flowers springing up along the pathway of the sea, and he has no consoling companion there, except in his dreams of some far-off shore.

Wednesday, Nov. 19. We have three sailors in the sick-bay to-day, in a very critical condition. They are all good men, so far at least as ship duty is concerned. Their death would make a serious breach in our crew. Our intelligent surgeon and his faithful assistants are devoted to them. They are not left night or day, for an hour, without a medical attendant. Commodore Stockton went into the sick-bay to-day to see them. He never forgets the sailor. He pities when others might reproach, forgives when others might denounce, and never abandons him even though he should abandon himself; and yet he exacts prompt obedience. His discipline, and that of Capt. Du Pont, is derived in a great measure from moral influences, the power of correct example and the pressure of circumstance.

Make the moral mechanism of a ship like a piece of well-contrived machinery, and but few blows will be required to keep it in order. But this requires energy in the details. It is much easier to flog a man who has committed an error, than it is to train him to avoid that error. Indolence flies to the lash, enlightened activity to a system of correct training, which is to be pressed at all points. And this training must be consistent with itself. It will not succeed if it is to be broken in upon constantly by brute force, or by language as disreputable to the officer who uses it, as it is unjust and provoking to the men to whom it is addressed. Profane or opprobrious epithets are a mockery of all discipline, except that which is enforced by the lash. An officer incapable of enforcing any other discipline, is a calamity to the service.

Thursday, Nov. 20. We discovered, this morning, a brig on our weather-beam, standing down for us, and hove-to with our main topsail to the mast. She run up Danish colors, and in an hour hove-to at a cable’s length under our lee-quarter. We lowered a boat and boarded her. She proved to be the brig Mariah, forty days from Rio Grande, bound to Hamburg. We inquired for fruit, but she had none. The captain wished to correct his reckoning, and well he might, for he was seven degrees out of his longitude.

Mr. Beale, our second master, took passage in her for the United States. It was arranged between him and the captain of the brig, that he should be put on board the first vessel that they might fall in with bound to an American port, and if they fell in with none before that, he should be landed at Dover, England. The captain must have had a very flexible policy. When it was understood that letters could be sent back, pens that had slumbered for weeks woke up. In half an hour the commodore had finished his communications, our home-letters were written, and Mr. Beale was passing over the side. In reaching the boat, a box of segars and a revolving-pistol fell overboard. Strange as it may seem, the pistol floated a moment, and was saved, while the segars were lost. I watched the letter-bag, saw that safe in, thought of the satisfaction it would give, and forgot the Havanas. Though the sea was running high, Mr. Beale reached the brig safely, and our boat returned. The little vessel then squared away, and we made sail; and thus we parted, the one for Hamburg, the other for Rio. How the paths of life cross each other!

Friday, Nov. 21. Poor Spillier, whose critical condition I have watched for several days in the sick-bay, has passed beyond hope. His disease has passed into pneumonia, and his lungs have already ceased, in a great measure, to perform their functions. I told him to-day he could not live. The sad intelligence brought tears to his eyes. He said it was dreadful to die away from his friends, and be buried in the sea. I told him his mother died a good Christian and had gone to heaven, and he could go there and meet her. But he must bring all the errors and sins of his life, and with sincere sorrow and contrition, lay them at the foot of the cross, and implore divine forgiveness. He was silent for a few minutes, and then uttered a brief and appropriate prayer, confessing his manifold transgressions, and casting himself on the compassion of Christ.

He was silent again, and seemed absorbed in thought. The expressions of mental anguish and hope alternated over his pale features like cloud and sun-light over a landscape. He now became composed, and opening his large swimming eyes upon me, thanked me for my attentions to him, and requested me to write his sisters; to give them his dying love; to say that he died in Christ and hoped to go to heaven, where he should see their mother. He told me that the dread of being buried at sea had left him; that it was no matter where his poor body was laid, if his soul was saved; that his blessed mother would know him and would be the first to greet him. How the ties of a mother’s love fasten upon her child, soothing the couch of pain and triumphing over the terrors of the grave!

Saturday, Nov. 22. We have a stiff wind to-day from the southeast, and we are running, close hauled, under reefed topsails. The sea is high, and every now and then a huge wave throws its curling crest through some half-closed port, as a wolf pounces into a sheep-fold, or as the arch adversary o’erleaped the green wall of Eden. Though we are any thing but Eden, with its beauty and its bliss: our first parent would have had but little cause of regret, if, in resigning Eden, he had relinquished only the habitudes of a sea-life. A wigwam might have consoled him for his loss. No Milton had sung—

The truth is, man was never intended for a nautical being. He was made perfect, but he has sought out many inventions; and this going to sea is one of them. His pathway on the deep is hedged about with storms, icebergs, water-spouts, and breakers. But, in the strange perversity of his nature, he perseveres through the whole of them. He knows and feels that he is a fool in his nautical obstinacy, and yet he clings to it, as the inebriate to the cup that consumes his vitals. He seems to court hardship for its own sake, and to court peril for the excitement which it bestows. But for the indecency of the thing he would toll, in advance, his own funeral-bell, that its fearful monotone might tremble on his heart before it should be cold. And he would almost dig his own grave, that he might hear his coffin rumbling down to its rest.

Sunday, Nov. 23. Another Sabbath morn has poured its holy light on land and sea. On land, the stir of the village and the tumult of the great city have ceased. Men walk softly in the prelude of that rest which remains to the good. Sacred truth melts on their hearts like dew. No community in a Christian land can be utterly bereft of moral influence. If it has none from within, there is a pressure from without. The moral as well as physical atmosphere tends to an equilibrium. Righteous Lot may have fled from Sodom, but his warning voice rolled back upon the wind to the doomed city.

But a ship is cut off by its position from all extraneous influences. It is like a ball suspended in the centre of a hollow sphere. This isolation has placed it beyond the reach, and seemingly beyond the sympathies, of those who dwell on the land. They have regarded it as a thing apart from themselves, a thing with which they had no common bond of brotherhood, and they have abandoned it to its calamities and its crimes. When guilt and misery have done their worst, when the pirate-flag has been unfurled where the insignia of commerce streamed before, instead of accusing their own apathy and negligence, they have seemed to regard the terrible spectacle as some singular exemplification of divine justice—as some malignant star accursed and made

Monday, Nov. 24. Yesterday morning, as the men left their hammocks, the ominous whisper went round—“Spillier is dead!” He had died during the night, while storm and darkness rested on the face of the deep. Last evening, as the sun was going down, we consigned him to his floating grave. The deep-toned call, “All hands to bury the dead!” went like a knell through the ship. The body, wrapped in that hammock in which the deceased had swung to the force of the wind, was borne by his messmates, preceded by the chaplain of the ship, from the gun-deck up the forward hatch, and round the capstan to the lee-side; the band, with muffled drums, playing the “dead-march,” and the marine guard presenting arms. The commodore, the captain, and officers of the ship, took their position near the main-mast; the crew were stationed forward.

Then commenced the burial-service: “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead yet shall he live; and whosoever believeth in me shall never die.” When the solemn sentence was uttered, “We commit this body to the deep,” the inner end of the plank was lifted, and down its steep plane moved the hammocked dead, and a hoarse hollow sound followed the heavy plunge. The waters closed over the disappearing form—the ship glided on as before. Then, with impressive effect, came in the words, “Looking for the general resurrection in the last day, and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ, at whose second coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, the earth and sea shall give up their dead, and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in Him shall be changed, and made like unto His own glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself.” The benediction followed, and the crew returned in silence to their stations.

Reader, when you die, it will be, I trust, in the sabbath calm of your hushed chamber; but the poor sailor dies at sea between the narrow decks of his rolling vessel. The last accents that will reach your ears will be those of kindness and affection, such as flow from a mother’s care, and a sister’s solicitude; the last sounds that reach the ears of the dying sailor are the hoarse murmurs of that wave which seems to complain at the delay of its victim. You will be buried beneath the green tree, where love and grief may go to plant their flowers and cherish your virtues; but the poor sailor is hearsed in the dark depths of the ocean, there to drift about, in its under-currents, to the great judgment-day. Alas, for the poor sailor! the child of misfortune, impulse, and error: his brief life filled with privation, hardship, and peril; his grave in the foaming deep! Though man pity him not, may God remember his weaknesses and trials in the day of his last account.

Tuesday, Nov. 25th. We have had for two days past a steady breeze from the southeast, and have run an average of seven knots the hour. We are now in the hope of making Rio in twenty days from this time. This will make our whole passage forty-six days,—not a bad run. The Columbia was ninety-three days making the same passage; but it was at the most unfavorable season of the year. To take this as a specimen of her sailing would be doing great injustice to that noble frigate.

Wednesda, Nov. 26th. We are to-day in lat. 18° 49′ N., long. 33° 46′ W., with a light steady breeze from the southeast. We are knocked off to the west of our course. We ought to head east of south, even with the variation in our favor. We are anxious to cross the line at twenty-seven or eight, to avoid the head winds of Cape St. Roque. We are where we ought to have the northeast trades, but we have not yet had a puff of wind from that quarter. Unless our present breeze hauls or dies we shall be obliged to tack, which will be about as agreeable as running back in a railroad-car to make way for a locomotive ahead, when you are in haste to get on. But we have one thing to console us, it is all in the cruise, so let the winds blow as they list.

The hammers of our blacksmiths are heard this morning, the first time for some days. They have been silenced on account of the sick; but they are now going as if determined to make up lost time. Iron takes almost every shape under their blows. A ship’s blacksmith has no such word as can’t in his vocabulary. He takes his order, and tries to shape his iron accordingly, though he may know it to be utterly impracticable. We had on board the Natchez an old time-piece which had broken its main-spring. The first lieutenant, for fun, told the blacksmith to take it to the anvil and put a new main-spring in it. Hearing the puff of the bellows and the click of the hammer, I went forward, where I found the old watch taken to pieces, and the worthy representative of Vulcan, beating with his full force a piece of iron. “What are you doing with this time-piece?” I inquired. “Making a kinked-up sort of a thing, sir, to make it go,” was the sardonic reply.

Thursday, Nov. 27. The wind hauled round into our teeth last evening. We tacked to the east, and headed east by north through the night. But the wind soon became too light for us to make much progress in any direction. Instead of trade winds, these fickle puffs ought to be called the variables. No coquette was ever half so inconstant. The only certain thing about them is the lightning, which has been throwing its cables of flame from its aerial craft. I have often thought a thunder-cloud might be the chariot of the prince of darkness. But let that pass: digression is my besetting infirmity.

This morning, large masses of cloud broke the horizon in the east with their dark distended forms. The sun coming up behind them, converted their jagged outline into fire, and poured over their steep precipices torrents of flame. We predicted a strong wind from that quarter. But one battlement after another tumbled from this cloudy fortress, till only a few tottering bastions remained, and these soon dissolved,