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 tracts to 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, whose melodies 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.”
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 the shortest 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 shake a 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.