July 9, 10.--These two days we had much the same
fine weather, and made much the same way; but in the evening of the
latter day a pretty fresh gale sprung up at N.N.W., which brought us by
the morning in sight of the Isle of Wight.

Thursday, July 11.--This gale continued till towards noon; when the east
end of the island bore but little ahead of us. The captain swaggered and
declared he would keep the sea; but the wind got the better of him, so
that about three he gave up the victory, and making a sudden tack stood
in for the shore, passed by Spithead and Portsmouth, and came to an
anchor at a place called Ryde on the island.

A most tragical incident fell out this day at sea. While the ship was
under sail, but making as will appear no great way, a kitten, one of
four of the feline inhabitants of the cabin, fell from the window into
the water: an alarm was immediately given to the captain, who was then
upon deck, and received it with the utmost concern and many bitter
oaths. He immediately gave orders to the steersman in favor of the poor
thing, as he called it; the sails were instantly slackened, and all
hands, as the phrase is, employed to recover the poor animal. I was,
I own, extremely surprised at all this; less indeed at the captain's
extreme tenderness than at his conceiving any possibility of success;
for if puss had had nine thousand instead of nine lives, I concluded
they had been all lost. The boatswain, however, had more sanguine hopes,
for, having stripped himself of his jacket, breeches, and shirt, he
leaped boldly into the water, and to my great astonishment in a few
minutes returned to the ship, bearing the motionless animal in his
mouth. Nor was this, I observed, a matter of such great difficulty as
it appeared to my ignorance, and possibly may seem to that of my
fresh-water reader. The kitten was now exposed to air and sun on the
deck, where its life, of which it retained no symptoms, was despaired of
by all.

The captain's humanity, if I may so call it, did not so totally destroy
his philosophy as to make him yield himself up to affliction on this
melancholy occasion. Having felt his loss like a man, he resolved to
show he could bear it like one; and, having declared he had rather have
lost a cask of rum or brandy, betook himself to threshing at backgammon
with the Portuguese friar, in which innocent amusement they had passed
about two-thirds of their time.

But as I have, perhaps, a little too w