ugh still out of sight--our five hundred souls are fondly
dreaming of home, and the iron throats of the guns round the galley
re-echo with their songs and hurras--what more remains?

Shall I tell what conflicting and almost crazy surmisings prevailed
concerning the precise harbour for which we were bound? For, according
to rumour, our Commodore had received sealed orders touching that
matter, which were not to be broken open till we gained a precise
latitude of the coast. Shall I tell how, at last, all this uncertainty
departed, and many a foolish prophecy was proved false, when our noble
frigate--her longest pennant at her main--wound her stately way into
the innermost harbour of Norfolk, like a plumed Spanish Grandee
threading the corridors of the Escurial toward the throne-room within?
Shall I tell how we kneeled upon the holy soil? How I begged a blessing
of old Ushant, and one precious hair of his beard for a keepsake? How
Lemsford, the gun-deck bard, offered up a devout ode as a prayer of
thanksgiving? How saturnine Nord, the magnifico in disguise, refusing
all companionship, stalked off into the woods, like the ghost of an old
Calif of Bagdad? How I swayed and swung the hearty hand of Jack Chase,
and nipped it to mine with a Carrick bend; yea, and kissed that noble
hand of my liege lord and captain of my top, my sea-tutor and sire?

Shall I tell how the grand Commodore and Captain drove off from the
pier-head? How the Lieutenants, in undress, sat down to their last
dinner in the ward-room, and the champagne, packed in ice, spirted and
sparkled like the Hot Springs out of a snow-drift in Iceland? How the
Chaplain went off in his cassock, without bidding the people adieu? How
shrunken Cuticle, the Surgeon, stalked over the side, the wired
skeleton carried in his wake by his cot-boy? How the Lieutenant of
Marines sheathed his sword on the poop, and, calling for wax and a
taper, sealed the end of the scabbard with his family crest and
motto--_Denique Coelum?_ How the Purser in due time mustered his
money-bags, and paid us all off on the quarter-deck--good and bad, sick
and well, all receiving their wages; though, truth to tell, some
reckless, improvident seamen, who had lived too fast during the cruise,
had little or nothing now standing on the credit side of their Purser's
accounts?

Shall I tell of the Retreat of the Five Hundred inland; not, alas! in
battle-array, as at quarters, but scattered broadcast over the