29 



December 15. 

 Our wind is like Lady Townley's separate al- 

 lowance : " that little has been made less ; 99 or, 

 rather, it has dwindled away to nothing. We 

 are now so absolutely becalmed, that I begin se- 

 riously to suspect all the crew of being Phseacians; 

 and that at this identical moment Neptune is 

 amusing himself by making the ship take root in 

 the ocean ; a trick which he played once before 

 to a vessel (they say) in the days of Ulysses. I 

 have got some locust plants on board in pots : if 

 we continue to sail as slowly as we have done for 

 the last week, before we reach Jamaica my plants 

 will be forest trees, little Jem, the cabin-boy, will 

 have been obliged to shave, and the black terrier 

 will have died of old age long ago. Great num- 

 bers of porpoises were playing about to-day, and 

 tumbling under the ship's very nose. When in 

 their gambols they allow themselves to be seen 

 above the surface, they are of a dirty blackish 

 brown, and as ugly as heart can wish ; but in the 

 waves they acquire a fine sea-green cast, and their 

 spouting up water in the sunbeams is extremely 

 ornamental. 



THE HELMSMAN. 



Hark ! the bell ! it sounds midnight ! — all hail, thou new 

 heav'n ! 



How soft sleep the stars on their bosom of night ! 

 While o'er the full moon, as they gently are driven, 

 Slowly floating the clouds bathe their fleeces in light. 



