And held it trembling there.
"The days pass, and our ship flies fast upon her way."
For several days while sailing near the line we saw the constellations of both hemispheres, but heading north, we left those of the south at last, with the Southern Cross—most beautiful in all the heavens—to watch over a friend.
Leaving these familiar southern stars and sailing toward constellations in the north, we hoist all sail to the cheery breeze which carries us on.
In this pleasant state of sailing with our friends all about us, we stood on and on, never doubting once our pilot or our ship.
A phantom of the stately Aquidneck appeared one night, sweeping by with crowning skysails set, that fairly brushed the stars. No apparition could have affected us more than the sight of this floating beauty, so like the Aquidneck, gliding swiftly and quietly by, from her mission to some foreign land—she, too, was homeward bound!
This incident of the Aquidneck's ghost, as it appeared to us, passing at midnight on the sea, left a pang of lonesomeness for a while.
But a carrier dove came next day, and perched upon the mast, as if to tell that we had yet a friend! Welcome harbinger of good! you bring us thoughts of angels.
The lovely visitor remained with us two days, off and on, but left for good on the third, when we reached away from Avis Island, to which, maybe, it was bound. Coming as it did from the east, and flying west toward the island when it left, bore out the idea of the lay of sweet singer Kingsley's "Last Buccaneer."
If I might but be a sea dove, I'd fly across the main