Their soft and fleecy wings.
“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-gotten thing. 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 during the 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 the whisky which 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.