h life, of feeling no
interest where there was no difficulty to overcome, after I had fully
conquered all the various methods of making this calculation, to make it
all became a great bore. So I clapped on more steam, and giving the
ship more way, and allowing every day for forty or fifty miles, of
westerly currents, I, by my account, ran the _Eos_ high and dry upon the
Island of Barbadoes, three good weeks before we made the land. Thus, I
had the satisfaction of looking on with placid indolence, whilst my
messmates were furiously handling their Gunter's scales, and straining
their eyes over the small printed figures in the distance and departure
columns of John Hamilton Moore, of blessed (cursed?) memory, in a cabin
over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, that was melting at the same time the
youthful navigator, and the one miserable purser's dip that tormented
rather than enlightened him with its flickering yellow flame.

As we neared the island, greater precautions were taken to preserve the
convoy. We sailed in more compact order, and scarcely progressed at all
during the night. The whippers-in were on the alert, for it was well
known that this part of the Atlantic was infested with numerous small
French men-of-war, and some privateer schooners.

That morning at length arrived, when it was debated strongly whether the
faint discoloration that broke the line of the western horizon as seen
from the mast-head, were land or not. As daylight became more decided,
so did the state of our convoy. The wolves were hovering round the
sheep. Well down to the southward there was a large square-rigged,
three-masted vessel, fraternising with one of our finest West Indiamen.
The stranger looked tall, grim, and dark, with his courses up, but his
top-gallant sails and royals set. The white sails of the merchant
vessel, and she was under a press of sail, were flying in all
directions; she was hove-to, with her studding-sails set, and many of
her tacks and sheets were flapping to the wind. Both vessels were hull
down from the deck, and we well understood what was going forward.
Right astern, and directly in the wind's eye of us, was a flat, broad
schooner running before the wind, with nothing set but her fore
stay-sail. As she lifted to the sea, at the edge of the horizon, her
strength of beam was so great, and her bulwarks so little above the
water, that she seemed to make way broadside on, rather than to sail in
the usual position. T