CHAPTER X.PASSAGE FROM CALLAO TO HONOLULU.

DEPARTURE FROM CALLAO.—THE RUM SMUGGLER.—SUNSET.—SEA-BIRDS—A SAILOR’S DEFENCE.—GENERAL QUARTERS.—SPIRIT RATION.—THE SAILOR AND RELIGION.—THE FLAG.—SAGACITY OF THE RAT.—THE CLOUD.—CALMS AND SHOWERS.—RELIGIOUS TRACTS.—CONSTELLATIONS.—TRADE WINDS.—CONDUCT OF THE CREW.—MOON IN THE ZENITH.—LAY SERMON.—FUNERAL.—LAND HO!

“Huzza! for Otaheite! was the cry,As stately swept the gallant vessel by,The breeze springs up, the lately flapping sailExtends its arch before the growing gale.”

“Huzza! for Otaheite! was the cry,

As stately swept the gallant vessel by,

The breeze springs up, the lately flapping sail

Extends its arch before the growing gale.”

Saturday, May 9.We rousted our anchors this afternoon from the bed in which they have slumbered for the last six weeks, and stood out to sea from the bay of Callao. The breeze freshened as the sun set, and before our mid-watch was out, only the rock of San Lorenzo was seen lifting its naked peaks into the light of the moon.

Farewell, Callao! I have seen quite enough of your destitution and dirt, your pickpockets and parrots, your fish and your fleas, your brats and your buzzards. I wonder not that nature in sore disgust sunk your progenitor from the light of the sun; and unless you reform, you may expect to share the same fate. Through your chambers the dolphins will sport;your forsaken harps will thrill beneath the wild fingers of the mermaid, while, far above, the hoarse wave pours on the rocks your death-dirge. The sea-gull only will know the place of your rest, and only the poor pelican mourn that you are not.

Sunday, May 10.Divine service: officers and crew all present. Subject of the sermon, the temptations of the sailor. A chaplain in the navy has one advantage over his brethren on land. He has his parishioners in the most compact of all possible forms, and every one present when he officiates. In making his official visits he has not to ride around among five hundred families located at all points of the compass. He cannot stir without coming in contact with them. But he has this disadvantage; in the vicissitudes of a sea-life they are extremely apt to break away from his constraining influence. They may be brought back again, but it is too often through the deepest self-inflicted humiliation.

I was called down from Lima to see a sailor who was supposed to be dying. As I came to the hammock in which he was lying, he told me he did not think he should live, and that he felt unfit to die. He made a free and frank confession of the errors of his life, and desired me to pray that he might be forgiven. I tried to lead his thoughts to the cross and to the fountain of Christ’s blood. To these his contritionand solicitude quickly turned. He seemed not to doubt, in his infinite need, their full sufficiency. I prayed with him; he earnestly responded, and so did his messmates, who stood silently grouped about his hammock. Sailors well know what is involved in that awful transition which we undergo in death. They never trifle with the event itself, however heedless they may be in the indulgences which lead to it.

Monday, May 11.We have a fine, steady wind on our larboard quarter. It has carried us, with the aid of a strong current, during the last twenty-four hours, two hundred and sixty miles. This good fortune, however, cannot last. We must part with the wind as we approach the equator, and perhaps before. But sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. It is much wiser rightly to enjoy the blessings of the present, than to yield ourselves to anxieties about the contingencies of the future.

We have a beautiful sunset. The air is serene, and the blue circle of the sky rests in tranquil softness on the utmost verge of the ocean. The whole realm of waters seems cradled in its limitless sweep. The rays of the descending orb lie along the gently heaving billows in lines of level light. The clouds which o’ercanopy his couch of repose, are robed in purple and gold; while the long vistas which open through them, seem as soft avenues to the spirit-land.

“Methinks it were no pain to die,On such an eve, when such a skyO’ercanopies the West.To gaze my fill on yon calm deep,And, like an infant, fall to sleepOn earth, my mother’s breast.“There’s peace and welcome in yon seaOf endless blue tranquillity.The clouds are living things;I trace their veins of liquid gold,I see them solemnly unfoldTheir soft and fleecy wings.“These be the angels that conveyUs weary children of a day—Life’s tedious journey o’er—Where neither passions come, nor woes,To vex the genius of reposeOn Death’s majestic shore.”

“Methinks it were no pain to die,On such an eve, when such a skyO’ercanopies the West.To gaze my fill on yon calm deep,And, like an infant, fall to sleepOn earth, my mother’s breast.

“Methinks it were no pain to die,

On such an eve, when such a sky

O’ercanopies the West.

To gaze my fill on yon calm deep,

And, like an infant, fall to sleep

On earth, my mother’s breast.

“There’s peace and welcome in yon seaOf endless blue tranquillity.The clouds are living things;I trace their veins of liquid gold,I see them solemnly unfoldTheir soft and fleecy wings.

“There’s peace and welcome in yon sea

Of endless blue tranquillity.

The clouds are living things;

I trace their veins of liquid gold,

I see them solemnly unfold

Their soft and fleecy wings.

“These be the angels that conveyUs weary children of a day—Life’s tedious journey o’er—Where neither passions come, nor woes,To vex the genius of reposeOn Death’s majestic shore.”

“These be the angels that convey

Us weary children of a day—

Life’s tedious journey o’er—

Where neither passions come, nor woes,

To vex the genius of repose

On Death’s majestic shore.”

Tuesday, May 12.We have now leisure to look back as well as forward. Our crew conducted themselves remarkably well at Callao. Our boats were in constant communication with the shore, without an officer in them. And yet, during six weeks, no disturbances took place; and only one or two cases of intoxication occurred. One attempt was made by a hand in the third cutter to smuggle off a skin of rum. It was discovered by the officer who overhauled the boat as she came alongside. An effort was made to find its owner, but no one would acknowledge the ill-gottenthing. As the crew of the boat must have been cognizant of the fact, they were informed by Capt. Du Pont, that unless the name of the offender was given up, they would all be punished. They were given an hour to decide what should be done. Before its expiration three of the crew gave in the name of the smuggler; and he paid the penalty, which involved a loss of the contraband article and the infliction of a severe chastisement. We have no laws with us which are a dead letter.

Wednesday, May 13.Our wind has veered still further aft, and consequently fills fewer of our sails; but we are running before it at the rate of nine and ten knots the hour. The sky is covered with light, fleecy clouds, through which the sun’s rays melt without any intensity of light. The ocean has a long, undulating swing, like that of some vast mass which has been seeking for ages to rock itself to rest, but is prevented by some invisible power that has decreed against its repose.

Thirty more of the crew to-day voluntarily relinquished their spirit ration. They considered it a source of mischief. A sailor attached to one of our frigates was court-martialed for an attempt to break open the spirit-room. His defence before the court was ingenious, to say the least of it. The government, he said, had given him two tots of grog duringthe day, and a third by way of splicing the main-brace. The wardroom steward had given him, for some service he had rendered, two more, and these five had made him crazy. It was not him, he said, but thewhiskywhich was in him that had made the assault on the spirit-room. And now, as the government had administered to him more than half of this whisky, the government should bear half the responsibility of the offence. He therefore prayed that one half of the lashes which this offence merited might be given to the government, and the other half he would take himself.

There is a volume of argument, in this defence, against the whisky-ration. It is a shame for the government to render a sailor half intoxicated, and then punish him for becoming wholly so. It is thefirstglass, and not the last, on which your indignation should light. This whisky-ration has done evil enough in the service; let it be consigned to perdition, where it belongs.

Thursday, May 14.The birds which followed us from the coast have returned; but several boobies, who had probably lost their reckoning, circled around our masts at sunset. As twilight deepened, they perched on our yards, and were in a few minutes sound asleep. They might have been easily captured, but sailors are not very partial to such trophies.There is something in their name which they do not like, and which seems to react on the valor of the captor. Give them a tiger, and they will storm his jungle with only such weapons as they can pick up on the way. But a booby, that can harm no one, and whose stupidity seems to have suggested his name, is allowed to go unmolested. The weakest man in the community has generally the fewest detractors, while an intellectual giant will always have a pack at his heels. There is more honor in strikingata lion, than there is in killing a monkey.

Friday, May 15.The sick sailor whom I came down from Lima to see, has passed the crisis of his disease, and may recover. He fluttered for some time between life and death. The vital flame seemed to come and go as a thing apart from him. But now its ray is more bright and steady. He is an orphan, without father or mother; but has a sister, to whom he is much attached. The idea of being permitted to see her again, is almost too much for his exhausted state. If you would get at the true character of the sailor, you must visit him in his sickness. His better feelings then gush out over the asperities of his lot, like a spring from amid the tangled shrubs of the wildwood.

Saturday, May 16.We went to general quartersthis morning at three bells, and exercised the guns. Those on the main-deck are so heavy, they require a prodigious outlay of strength to work them. Any irregularity in the application of the force frustrates all dexterity of movement; each man must forego all individual volition, independent action, and become a part of the mechanism which is to be tasked to the utmost as a whole; and yet he must have all that enthusiasm which is felt in freedom from constraint, and when the strong impulses of the soul throw themselves off in resistless action. It is much easier to slash away gallantly with the sabre, than to train quickly and accurately on the enemy a forty-four-pounder. This requires self-possession, and indomitable firmness. Sailors have no retreat. They must conquer, die, or surrender. The last they would seldom do, were it not forced upon them by the laws of humanity. They would sooner die, as boarders, on the deck of the enemy, than survive, as captives, over their own keel.

Sunday, May 17.Divine service: subject of the sermon, the influence of religion on a man’s intellectual character. The object of the speaker was to show that religion aids mental development,—that while it strikes down pride, it imparts true dignity. Nothing can be more absurd than the idea, that religion impairs strength of character. It invests eventhe timid with a firmness and force which stand undismayed amid dungeons, racks, and flaming stakes.

To possess the religious character seems to the sailor such a vast stride in advance of his ordinary habits, that he is extremely diffident in preferring his humble claims. He will pray when peril presses, for he thinks a wicked man may do that, but he connects a worthy profession of personal piety with a degree of sanctity hardly compatible with the infirmities of his nature. He has rarely enjoyed the advantages of a religious education; no moral training has gradually introduced him to the sanctities of the Christian life. The utmost that he feels himself fit to do is, like the poor publican, to smite upon his breast, and exclaim, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” But to take his place among those whose piety is to guide and animate others, is to him as if a lost star were to spring out of the depths of darkness, and take its station among the burning constellations of heaven. When therefore he does avow his religious faith and hopes, it is generally with him no halfway measure; no decent compromise between conscience and inclination. He takes with him his all for this world and the next.

Monday, May 18.The phrase “fickle as the wind” is not applicable to the trades of the Pacific. The wind before which we are running has hardly veereda point for the last week. I commend its steadiness to those politicians who find it necessary every few months to define their position.

We have had about our ship this afternoon several sea-birds, to which sailors have given the name of boatswains. They have a long feather in their tail; which streams behind them like the train of a duchess at court. But it answers a much wiser purpose, for instead of embarrassing motion, it acts as a rudder, and steadies the bird in navigating the aerial currents. Nature never bestows any useless appendages. These are the achievements of human vanity; and sorry achievements they are. They even enter the grave, and mock with their tinsel its awful reality.

Tuesday, May 19.We have had through the day a soft, hazy atmosphere. At sunset these light, floating vapors gathered themselves into more substantial clouds, and promised a shower. But after hanging on the horizon for a time, they seemed to sink below its rim. The moon came up late; her soft light fell on the sea, but the wings of the clouds, if touched by the effulgence, were invisible. The wind, though of sufficient force to carry us on some eight knots, scarcely agitated the breast of the ocean. It seemed as something intended to move over its level plain and not to disturb its depths. It was like a shadow gliding over the tops of a vast sleeping forest.

Wednesday, May 20.Our gun-carriages, with their black paint on a white ground, could never be made to look neat for any length of time. The white was perpetually working itself through its sable covering, like an inborn levity of heart through an assumed gravity of demeanor. Our captain and first lieutenant, who have an acknowledged taste in every thing that belongs to the appearance of a man-of-war, ordered the carriages thoroughly scraped of every particle of paint. A dark stain was then given to the wood, through which the grain shows itself in its native strength. Over this a thin varnish of spirit and oil was spread, imparting to the wood a beautiful polish, and blending itself with its texture. The battery of a frigate, especially as you come upon her gun-deck, is that which first strikes the eye. Like the pulpit of a church, if forlorn in its appearance, elegance elsewhere will not retrieve the error. A rough pulpit may have thunder in it, but the thunder don’t lie in its roughness.

Thursday, May 21.One of our quarter-masters has just finished a new and splendid flag, which we shall display at the islands. How profound the love and reverence of the sailor for his flag! He connects with it, as it streams in freedom and light on the wind, a thousand glorious memories. It points to crimson waves where his comrades of the deckhave triumphed or sunk overpowered to their rest. He holds the deepest crime to be that of treason to its obligations and sacred hopes. He would surrender it only to the King of kings.

The last words of the late Commodore Hull were addressed to the stern majesty of Death.

“I STRIKE MY FLAG.”I strike not to a sceptred king—A man of mortal breath—A weak, imperious, fickle thing;I strike to thee, O Death!I strike that flag which in the fightThe trust of millions hailed,The flag which threw its meteor lightWhere England’s lion quailed.I strike to thee, whose mandates fallAlike on king and slave,Whose livery is the shroud and pall,And palace-court the grave.Thy captives crowd the caverned earth,They fill the rolling sea,From court and camp, the wave and hearth,All, all have bowed to thee.But thou, stern Death, must yet resignThy sceptre o’er this dust;The Power that makes the mortal thine,Will yet remand his trust.His signal trump shall pierce this earBeneath the grave’s cold clod—This form, these features reappearIn life before their God.

“I STRIKE MY FLAG.”

I strike not to a sceptred king—A man of mortal breath—A weak, imperious, fickle thing;I strike to thee, O Death!

I strike not to a sceptred king—

A man of mortal breath—

A weak, imperious, fickle thing;

I strike to thee, O Death!

I strike that flag which in the fightThe trust of millions hailed,The flag which threw its meteor lightWhere England’s lion quailed.

I strike that flag which in the fight

The trust of millions hailed,

The flag which threw its meteor light

Where England’s lion quailed.

I strike to thee, whose mandates fallAlike on king and slave,Whose livery is the shroud and pall,And palace-court the grave.

I strike to thee, whose mandates fall

Alike on king and slave,

Whose livery is the shroud and pall,

And palace-court the grave.

Thy captives crowd the caverned earth,They fill the rolling sea,From court and camp, the wave and hearth,All, all have bowed to thee.

Thy captives crowd the caverned earth,

They fill the rolling sea,

From court and camp, the wave and hearth,

All, all have bowed to thee.

But thou, stern Death, must yet resignThy sceptre o’er this dust;The Power that makes the mortal thine,Will yet remand his trust.

But thou, stern Death, must yet resign

Thy sceptre o’er this dust;

The Power that makes the mortal thine,

Will yet remand his trust.

His signal trump shall pierce this earBeneath the grave’s cold clod—This form, these features reappearIn life before their God.

His signal trump shall pierce this ear

Beneath the grave’s cold clod—

This form, these features reappear

In life before their God.

Friday, May 22.I was sitting at a late hour last evening on the gun-deck to catch the breeze, which came freshly through the larboard ports, when a large, sleek, long-tailed rat, with a slow, aristocratic step, approached the combings of the hatch, which he mounted, and then deliberately descended into the steerage among the junior officers. What his errand was there, I know not; but there was a dignity and self-possession in his demeanor which was admirable. He seemed as one conscious of his rights, and not at all disposed to waive them. I have always felt some regard for a rat since my cruise in the Constellation. We were fitting for sea at Norfolk, and taking in water and provisions; a plank was resting on the sill of one of the ports which communicated with the wharf. On a bright moonlight evening, we discovered two rats on the plank coming into the ship. The foremost was leading the other by a straw, one end of which each held in his mouth. We managed to capture them both, and found, to our surprise, the one led by the other was stone-blind. His faithful friend was trying to get him on board, where he would have comfortable quarters during a three years’ cruise. We felt no disposition to kill either,and landed them on the wharf. How many there are in this world to whom the fidelity of that rat readeth a lesson!

Saturday, May 23.We have now been out fourteen days from Callao, and have sailed two thousand eight hundred miles, making an average of two hundred miles a day. Not a squall, nor a threatening cloud, have we encountered; nor have we once furled our royals, or taken in our studding-sails. The wind has been, with scarce a point’s variation, dead aft; and has maintained an equanimity which the most serene philosophical temper can scarcely hope to rival. Contentment, cheerfulness, and alacrity have been everywhere visible among the crew. Not an offence has been committed which has received or merited punishment. Such is our condition in the midst of the Pacific—under the influence of its balmy airs—and under a discipline in which justice and humanity are admirably blended. We have yet to sail some twenty-eight hundred miles before we make our port. The distance between Callao and the Sandwich Islands is about twice as great as that between New York and Liverpool. Yet we all remember the time when a man bound to Liverpool, or London, took leave of his friends with a sadness and solemnity, which augured a dismal doubt of his return.

Sunday, May 24.Though we are near the Equator, where the weather is apt to be variable, yet we have had a delightful day, a brilliant sky, a smooth sea, and a mild aft wind. We had divine service at six bells. The subject of the discourse was, the example of the primitive Christians,—their faith, their zeal, their constancy, their sufferings, their triumphs. They are a cloud of witnesses who have gone before us to heaven, but they have left their footprints on the shores of time. The example of their faith and constancy remains for our imitation.

Every man, however humble his sphere, may be, and ought to be, in his own life a preacher of righteousness. A religious example, wherever found, is invested with a prodigious moral power. Such an example is within the reach of every one on the decks of a man-of-war; and there is no situation where its effects would be more certain. We are as responsible for the good which we can do, as the evil which we have done. The man who had one talent was condemned, not because he had only one talent, but because he hid that talent in the earth.

Monday, May 25.We crossed the Equator last night in our first watch, at longitude one hundred and twenty west. We crossed it first on our way to Rio de Janeiro; since that we have sailed through one hundred and twenty degrees of latitude, and almostas many degrees of temperature. At Rio we were melted down with the heat; off Cape Horn our fingers were stiffened with the cold; and now the most grateful gift in the world would be a glass of ice-water. Such extremes of temperature are the more felt in the exposures inseparable from a sea-life. We have on board ship no forests into which we can rush from the heat; no glowing grates, around which we can gather from the cold. We must take the elements, whatever they may be, in their full force. They shatter the constitution; and sink a grave in the sailor’s path, over which he rarely passes to a green old age.

Tuesday, May 26.Clouds hung in thick masses on the eastern horizon this morning. They had not that jagged outline, which in other seas indicates a severe blow. They loomed up lazily, as if they knew not themselves for what purpose their dark forms had been shoved between us and the splendors of the breaking day. We supposed they were charged with showers, and watched their motions with some interest. But the higher they ascended, the thinner they became, till at last they gradually melted away, and left only the soft over-arching sky. But they may gather themselves another morn, each take a distinct shape, and utter its satirical soliloquy, like the cloud of Shelley:—

I am the daughter of earth and water,And the nursling of the sky;I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;I change, but I cannot die.For after the rain, when with never a stain,The pavilion of heaven is bare,And the winds and the sunbeams, with their convex gleams,Build up the blue dome of air,I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,And out of the caverns of rain,Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,I arise and unbuild it again.

I am the daughter of earth and water,

And the nursling of the sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain, when with never a stain,

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

And the winds and the sunbeams, with their convex gleams,

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.

Wednesday, May 27.We have been becalmed all day between the northeast and northwest trades. The ocean has slumbered around us with scarce a ripple. A large shark was seen hanging around our ship through the morning. A strong hook, attached to a rope and baited with a pound or two of pork, was drifted astern. He nabbed it as a famishing politician an office. He was a monster in strength as well as size, and made the sea foam with his struggles to break away. It required four or five sailors to draw him in; and when on deck he cleared a pretty broad circle by his ferocious sweep. But he was soon overmastered, deprived of his head and tail by the axe, and cut up into pieces accommodated to the sailors’ culinary apparatus. Many, as they ate him, derived their keenest relish from their inherited antipathy to his species.

Thursday, May 28.We have had through the day scarce a breath of wind; the thermometer has ranged at 85; the heat below has been quite insupportable. The sun set through a thick, stagnant atmosphere; our sails hung motionless, save an occasional flap against the mast, given them by the sluggish swing of the ship. This continued till six bells of the first watch, when the rain fell in a perfect deluge. The water formed an instant lake between the bulwarks of the spar-deck, fell through the hatches, and flooded us below. It was some minutes before the hatches could be hooded; and when they were, our last breath of fresh air was shut out. We continued in this situation through the night. The sun rose into a dim, murky haze, in which his beams were quenched long before they reached our position.

Friday, May 29.The most gorgeous sunsets I have ever witnessed at sea have been near the equator. We have just been watching one from the deck; all eyes were fastened upon its magnificent phases. The whole west appeared at first as if it had lost its steep wall, and seemed to stretch away like a limitless prairie in conflagration. It changed and presented itself as a wild, picturesque landscape; mountain forests were on fire, throwing their lurid flames upon the rushing torrents, and into the deep ravines, and upon the sleeping lakes. It changedagain, and poured its splendors upon the bastions, domes, and turrets of a vast city. Princely palaces, columned temples, and monumental pyramids, soared into a crimson atmosphere. A rushing wind swept the aerial structures, and over their gigantic ruins rolled an ocean of flame. If this be sunset, what will that conflagration be which will at last wrap the world!

Saturday, May 30.We have been in a calm the greater part of the day. The mirror of the ocean has been broken only by the plunges of a huge whale. He rose at times within a few fathoms of our ship, blowing the brine almost into the faces of our crew. They would, if permitted, have retaliated with their harpoons; though the result would have been only the loss of their weapons, for the monster would have carried them off with as much ease as Samson the bodkins of Delilah. He tumbled around us for several hours, as if measuring his size and strength with that of our frigate. At last, with one great heave, made as if in pride and scorn, he plunged and disappeared. Long life to him. I like his independent bearing.

One of our seamen got tipsy to-day, and raised a disturbance on the berth-deck. How he managed to get a double dose from the grog-tub is not known. And yet he alleges his liquor came from that nuisance which the law has sanctioned. I have taken somepains, during the long period that I have been in the navy, to ascertain the causes of the offences which have called for punishment; and from these inquiries I am clearly of the opinion, that these offences, in nine cases out of ten, are connected with ardent spirits; and are committed, in almost every case, by those who draw the whisky-ration provided by the government. I am clear in the conviction, that any statutes intended to restrain or punish intoxication in a national ship, must be without moral force so long as our legislation panders to this appetite in the sailor. The government presents itself before the seaman with a cup of whisky in one hand and a cat-o’-nine tails in the other. Here, my good fellow, drink this; but if you drink any more, then look out for these cats. It is amazing that such a flagrant violation of every principle of justice and humanity should escape the reprobation and even oblique animadversion of the department, and be left to the remonstrances of those who hold no official relation to the navy.

Sunday, May 31.Ill health has disqualified me for performing service to-day. Indeed it would have been difficult had I been well, as the rain has been falling in frequent and copious showers, attended by squalls, which have obliged us to take in our lighter sails about as soon as they were set. I gave tractsto the crew who called for them, and nearly all applied. Every chaplain should supply himself with a good store of these silent preachers. They help him on in his good work. They will be read by seamen when more labored efforts would be neglected. Many a sailor owes his conversion to the modest tract. They have poured a steady light around his dying hammock which had else been wrapped in darkness. The brightest triumphs of religion are found nearest the grave. Its last great triumph will be over death itself.

There has been for some weeks past a growing seriousness among our sailors. The indications are too obvious to be mistaken. Two or three of them I have reason to believe have experienced religion. They meet every night and pray for the conversion of others. This little cloud may yet extend itself, and its drops may fall in a copious shower. Let us have confidence in the power of God’s grace.

Monday, June 1.The northern constellations which have been lost to us for several months, now that we have recrossed the equator, begin to emerge into vision. They come back like old, tried friends, whose fidelity time cannot chill or distance impair. Man may change, but nature never. The same look of love which she cast upon our cradles she will cast upon our graves. The same exulting streams, whosemelodies charmed our childhood, will at last roll among the echoing hills our loud requiem; while the gentle dews steep with tears the flowers which spring shall sprinkle around our place of rest. But yonder streams upon us again the constellations of our youth.

“The northern team,And great Orion’s more refulgent beam,To which, around the axle of the sky,The Bear, revolving, turns his golden eye.”

“The northern team,

And great Orion’s more refulgent beam,

To which, around the axle of the sky,

The Bear, revolving, turns his golden eye.”

Tuesday, June 2.The northwest trades brought us on briskly till within a few degrees of that point where we crossed the equator. We there fell into calms, light baffling winds, and tremendous falls of rain. We were several days working our way through these to the seventh degree, north latitude, where we took the northeast trades, and we are now running ten and eleven knots the hour. These trades blow obliquely to the equator, and prevail with a surprising regularity and force. A ship bound to the Sandwich Islands, as we are, should make the shortest cut across the variables. When the northwest trades leave her, in consequence of her proximity to the line, she should take advantage of every puff of wind to make northing, till she gains the northeast trades. She may run a little further, it is true, by this course, but she more than makes it up by her ultimate speed; and she escapes, by theshortest route, the extremely disagreeable weather which prevails near the equator.

Wednesday, June 3.A large flying-fish flew this evening into the cabin, through one of the side ports. It was rather a difficult achievement, as we were running ten knots. The little fellow had been attracted by the light, and flew at it, as the mullet in our southern streams leap at night into the lighted canoes of the negroes. Our flying-fish made a bad exchange, not out of the frying-pan into the fire, it is true, but out of the water into the frying-pan. But then he was dazzled, captivated by a floating light, gave chase, and came to ruin. It is ever thus with man; his life is an eager chase after some false light, some ignis fatuus of his imagination, which leads him on till at last he drops into his grave and disappears forever.

Thursday, June 4.We have the chart used by the frigate United States in her passage from Callao to Honolulu, on which her route is designated, and the distance which she ran each day dotted down. Up to the equator, we ran neck and neck with her. In the variables she got ahead of us; but we have now left her some three hundred miles astern. We have been making an average of two hundred and forty miles a day, without motion enough to shakea dew-drop from its level leaf. We have not had, except for a few days near the equator, occasion to take in our top-gallant studding-sails. The thermometer has stood pretty steady at about seventy-five, and the air is pure and bracing. If we reach our port on Monday next, which we have now a fair prospect of doing, we shall have made our passage from Callao in twenty-nine days; one of the very shortest passages on record. Five thousand four hundred miles in twenty-nine days! That will do.

Friday, June 5.We have the moon again directly in the zenith; she hangs there like a resplendent orb in the centre of a magnificent dome. The stars gleam out with timid auxiliary light; while soft clouds float with incense from earth’s thousand altars. The dome, beneath which the turbaned representative of the Prophet kneels, and that which bends in grandeur over the supplicating form of the papal hierarch, are poor when compared with this. The walls of St. Sophia will crumble, and the pillars of St. Peter’s give way, but nature’s great dome will still stand, brilliant and undecaying, as when it echoed the song of the morning stars over the birth of our planet; and it will stand the same,

“Till wrapp’d in flames the realms of ether glow,And heaven’s last thunder shakes the world below.”

“Till wrapp’d in flames the realms of ether glow,

And heaven’s last thunder shakes the world below.”

Saturday, June 6.We have in the sick-bay a sailor, James Mills, who must die. He may survive a few days longer, and must then go. He is in the prime of life, and a few months ago ranked among the most athletic on our decks. He is now but the shadow of the past, and hovers dimly on the verge of life. The night of that narrow house is not all dark to him; some rays of light reach it from the Cross. These are now all that can cheer him; they are all that can cheer the descending footsteps of the proudest monarch. Into death’s domain the honors and friendships of earth cannot enter; they leave their possessor in the hour of his utmost need. But there is One whose love will remain with the meek, when these depart; One whose smile will kindle up a morn even in the night of the grave.

Sunday, June 7.Commodore Stockton, who has always taken an interest in our religious exercises, having occasion to speak to the crew to-day, I induced him to extend his remarks to topics more sacred than those which lay within his original purpose. He spoke of the Bible as that crowning revelation which God has made of himself to man, of its elevating influences on the human soul, of the priceless counsels which it conveys, and the immortal hopes which it awakens. He contrasted the gloomy condition of those tribes and nations whichwere without it with that of those where its steady light shone, and found in this contrast a vindication of its divinity, which none could gainsay or resist. He commended its habitual study to the officers and crew as our only infallible rule of duty, as our only safe-guiding light in the mental and moral twilight of our being here. He rebuked the idea that religion was out of its element among sailors, and told them that of all classes of men they were the one that most needed its restraining influences and glorious promises, and denounced as insane a disposition to trifle with its precepts. He commended the good conduct of the crew on the Sabbath, and expressed the earnest hope, that they would continue, in the event of probable separation from them, the same respectful and earnest regard for the duties of religion.

Such remarks as these, coming from the commander of a ship or squadron, will do more to sustain a chaplain in the discharge of his difficult duties than any privileges which can be conferred upon him through the provisions of law. They honor the heart from which they flow, and their influence will be felt in the moral well-being of hundreds, when that heart shall have ceased to beat. The tree you have planted will grow, and its fruit come to maturity, though you see it not.

Monday, June 8.At seven bells of our forenoon watch the call of the boatswain, “All hands to bury the dead!” rolled its hoarse, deep tones through the ship. The remains of the deceased—wrapped in that hammock from which he had often sprung as his night-watch came round—was borne by his messmates up the main-hatch, and around the capstan, to the slow measures of the dead-march, played by the band. In the starboard waist, and on a plank, one end of which rested on the sill of an open port, the relic reposed, till in the funeral service the words were announced, “We commit this body to the deep;”—the inner end of the plank was then lifted, and the hammocked dead, with a hoarse, rumbling sound, glided down to his deep floating grave. Thus passed poor Mills from our midst in the morning of his days, with broken purposes and blighted hopes. Though the wave rolls over his form, and none can point to the place of his rest, his humble virtues still survive in the recollections of those who knew him.

“The departed! the departed!They visit us in dreams,And glide above our memoriesLike shadows over streams.The good, the brave, the beautiful,How dreamless is their sleep,Where rolls the dirge-like musicOf the ever-tossing deep!”

“The departed! the departed!

They visit us in dreams,

And glide above our memories

Like shadows over streams.

The good, the brave, the beautiful,

How dreamless is their sleep,

Where rolls the dirge-like music

Of the ever-tossing deep!”

Tuesday, June 9.Last evening, while it was yet some three hours to sunset, the cry of “Land ho!” rang from mast-head. It was the island of Hawaii boldly breaking the line of the horizon over our larboard bow. We were now near our port, but not sufficiently near to reach our anchorage by daylight. We were running ten knots, and orders were given to take in sail, that we might not shoot too far ahead.

Night, and the hour of slumber came on, and our dreams were filled with the flowers and fruit of sunny isles. Day broke over the steeps of Oahu, and threw its light into the port of Honolulu. Here at last we let go our anchors, and once more clewed up our sails. We had made one of the shortest passages on record from Callao. We had run for the last seven days an average of two hundred and thirty-five miles. We had sailed about six thousand miles, and had hardly disturbed a royal or studding-sail, and the sea had been smooth as the slumbering surface of an inland lake. Give me the Pacific and the trade winds. You have here a quiet ocean, a steady breeze, and an even temperature. In the Atlantic you are in squalls or calms; in the one you plunge about, and in the other you sleep.

Here we are to part with our passengers, Mr. Ten Eyk, our commissioner to the Sandwich Islands, with his lady, children, and Miss J——; and with JudgeTurrell, our consul to these islands, with his lady, children, and Mr. H. They have been with us since we sailed from Norfolk. Their society has helped to relieve the monotony of a sea-life. They have manifested no impatience at our delays, and have cheerfully conformed, in all respects, to the usages of a man-of-war. The consequence has been, an uninterrupted harmony between them and the officers, and an interchange of all those civilities on which the happiness of our social condition depends. They are to be landed under the salute to which their rank entitles them. They carry with them our esteem and our best wishes. May a kind Providence be their guardian and friend.

“Farewell! a word that may be and hath been,A sound that makes us linger—yet, farewell!”

“Farewell! a word that may be and hath been,

A sound that makes us linger—yet, farewell!”

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