10 o’clock, P. M. The wind went down with the sun, leaving only the long, low undulations of the sea. The moon is forth, placid as if this were no region of storms. The stars, without an obscuring veil, blaze in the deep blue vault of heaven. A flood of diamond light melts down through the depths of air, and pours itself in radiant softness on the sea. There it lies unbroken and still, save where the sleeping ocean gently heaves, like one who should breathe in his shroud. Such a night as this in the region of Cape Horn! It is as if a nightingale were to pour its liquid melody through the interludes of the forest-shaking storm.
But our anxiety is to know where, amid this serenity of the sea, the wind will next wake up—where the slumbering storm will first howl on the waste. The rising sun will not find us in that repose on which he shed his parting glance.
A change will come, like that the sculptor throws
In lines of life, on marble’s cold repose.
Friday, Feb. 13. In the night, our old frigate beginning to stir herself complainingly, like one troubled with bad dreams, I asked the officer of the deck, as he came below from the mid-watch, about the wind. “In gusts from the northwest,” was the reply. From the northwest! then we are laying our course—that will do; and I relapsed back again into slumber, and dreamed we had rounded Cape Horn. I saw it sheer astern, storming like a savage at the escape of his intended victim.
The wind favored us during the morning, and we shot ahead with high hopes of success. But by noon it began to haul round towards the south, and in an hour or two more reached its old quarter, the southwest. It is now blowing a gale, and we have all sails furled except our close-reefed main-top and storm try-sails. The sea is running high, and the huge combers, shaking the foam from their crests, are rushing down upon us like a host of cavalry frothing at the bit. The sun is sinking in cold dim light, and seems to abandon the ocean to the lashing tempest.
Such is the life of the sailor: one hour is full of sunshine, the next of storms. He lives between hope and disappointment: they alternate through his whole existence. Nothing but the most indomitable resolution could endure the vicissitudes of his lot. He is cheerful when others would despond, and triumphs when others would despair. He elicits sparks of joy from his hard lot, as you strike flashes of fire from flint. Ye who sigh over the tales of fictitious bereavement, bestow one glance on this real tragedy of life. Here are woes which no illusion paints,—a death-knell rung by no unseen hands.
Saturday, Feb. 14. The passenger who caught the first albatros, and which was liberated by the crew, caught another the day following and killed it to get its wings. It would probably have been rescued by the sailors had they been aware of the cruel intention of its captor. They associate a sacredness with this noble bird which invests it with the privileges of a charmed life, and regard a violation of this sanctity as an outrage, which will be followed by disastrous consequences. Dark ominous looks fell on their faces when the wild whisper went round among them that the beautiful albatros had been killed. We had been for several days in thick foul weather—
“At length did cross this albatros;
Through the fog it came;