"
gradually gave way to growlings, when old _Neptune_, as if in answer,
drove his chariot over its surface, and working its waters into a yeasty
foam, disturbed, at the same time, both our equilibrium and equanimity.

But little occurred to destroy the usual monotony of a sea voyage. At
long intervals "_sail ho_!" would be called out by the lookout on the
foretopsail yard, and after a time our eyes would be greeted from the
deck with the sight of another white-winged wanderer like ourself,
steering for his distant port. Then would come conjecture as to whither
he might be bound, and sailor-like reflections upon his rig, qualities
of sailing, and the judgment of the skipper in the selection of his
course.

Our reckoning, and the change of temperature both of air and water,
soon announced that we were approaching that equatorial divider of our
globe, called "_the Line_," and in about one degree of latitude above
it (1 deg. 16' N.) we made the islets of Saint Paul, a barren pile of
rocks of about one mile and a half in length, and of inconsiderable
breadth, standing solitarily and desolately here in mid ocean. Made
their longitude by the mean of three chronometers; observation 29 deg. 19'
57'' west; about one degree different from the longitude in which they
were laid down in our chart; an error which should be corrected.

It was here that a few years ago a Dutch East Indiaman was wrecked, and
of nearly two hundred souls but three or four were saved, and these were
taken off after remaining upon the rocks some twelve days, without
nourishment and exposed to all the horrors of starvation. Worse yet than
that, deprived of shelter from a vertical sun, without water to restore
the fluids which his fierce rays extracted from their parching bodies.
An immense number of birds were flying over and around these jagged
peaks, and who knows how greatly these may have added to the torture of
the shipwrecked crew, when failing nature denied the power to protect
themselves.

"Ah who can tell
The looks men cast on famished men;
The thoughts that came up there."

In the morning watch of the twenty-sixth of February, we "crossed the
line" in longitude 29 deg. 56' 50'' west, with such light breezes, that at
meridian we had logged but 30' south. We escaped the usual visit of old
_Neptune_ upon entering the threshold of his dominions,--and as it was
early morning, suppose the "Old Salt" was calmly reposing in th