t, day after day, the wind always astern and blowing
steadily and strong. The schooner sailed herself. There was no pulling
and hauling on sheets and tackles, no shifting of topsails, no work at
all for the sailors to do except to steer. At night when the sun went
down, the sheets were slackened; in the morning, when they yielded up the
damp of the dew and relaxed, they were pulled tight again--and that was
all.

Ten knots, twelve knots, eleven knots, varying from time to time, is the
speed we are making. And ever out of the north-east the brave wind
blows, driving us on our course two hundred and fifty miles between the
dawns. It saddens me and gladdens me, the gait with which we are leaving
San Francisco behind and with which we are foaming down upon the tropics.
Each day grows perceptibly warmer. In the second dog-watch the sailors
come on deck, stripped, and heave buckets of water upon one another from
overside. Flying-fish are beginning to be seen, and during the night the
watch above scrambles over the deck in pursuit of those that fall aboard.
In the morning, Thomas Mugridge being duly bribed, the galley is
pleasantly areek with the odour of their frying; while dolphin meat is
served fore and aft on such occasions as Johnson catches the blazing
beauties from the bowsprit end.

Johnson seems to spend all his spare time there or aloft at the
crosstrees, watching the _Ghost_ cleaving the water under press of sail.
There is passion, adoration, in his eyes, and he goes about in a sort of
trance, gazing in ecstasy at the swelling sails, the foaming wake, and
the heave and the run of her over the liquid mountains that are moving
with us in stately procession.

The days and nights are "all a wonder and a wild delight," and though I
have little time from my dreary work, I steal odd moments to gaze and
gaze at the unending glory of what I never dreamed the world possessed.
Above, the sky is stainless blue--blue as the sea itself, which under the
forefoot is of the colour and sheen of azure satin. All around the
horizon are pale, fleecy clouds, never changing, never moving, like a
silver setting for the flawless turquoise sky.

I do not forget one night, when I should have been asleep, of lying on
the forecastle-head and gazing down at the spectral ripple of foam thrust
aside by the _Ghost's_ forefoot. It sounded like the gurgling of a brook
over mossy stones in some quiet dell, and the crooning song of it lured