1894
Feb. 19
(No. 3)
At sea on Str. :Madiana"

as one of the ladies thought, tawny orange.
I now saw Portugese man o'war for the first time,
three or four of them, floating lightly on the waves
turning slowly round and round, flashing and
disappearing in the sunlight like bits of glass or 
ice. I also saw some flying fish at a distance and
two whales spouting.

There were no bird excepting two Herring Gulls
one young, the other a fully adult bird. The latter
came directly on the stern of the steamer and
tilting slightly on its long, gracefully-curved
wings looked down at me enquringly while I
looked up at through my glass.  Both these birds
were evidently roaming aimlessly about on the
ocean and neither attempted to follow our ship

 We had a full moon this evening and its
effect on the water was simply startling. As the
slight swells thrown off by our bows curled over
and [?] [?] foaming crests and slopes gleamed
with an intensity that fairly thrilled the eye and
yet had the peculiar softness of silver light. Highly
burnished silver in strong sunlight would be scarce
brighter and yet infinitely more dazzling for
this effect was altogether pleasing and soothing to the
sense of sight. There was positively no phosphorescence
at the time or indeed at any time this evening.
Riley thought that the phenomenon was due to the angle of the mooris rangs[?].
A full rigged barkantim[?] with every sail (28 of them) set
crossed and bows at 3P.M. bound for New York.