After a delay of a week or more with our friends at Santa Barbara we weighed anchor one bright morning in the middle of January and started southward for Acapulco, intending to pick up what prizes might chance to cross our path on the way thither.
But our passage southward was scarcely broken by a single event so important as the capture of a British trader. We had splendid weather all the way down.
When off Cape St. Lucas I for the first time witnessed that phenomenon of the desert and of the ocean which is denominated a mirage. It happened just about an hour before sunset. The day had been characterized by a peculiar kind of haze ever since noon. This silvery haze or vapor completely banked the western horizon, and was smitten by the beams of the descending sun into many beautiful hues, when—about the time before mentioned—the lookout suddenly sung out:
"A sail on the larboard bow!" then again in a few seconds:
"A sail on the starboard bow!"
At last he sung out in a tone of amazement:
"Sails all around the ships!"
This was true enough, but they were visionary sails, not on the ocean, but high up in the misty air, and probably belonging to those vessels which came to the poet in his visions, when he
"Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;