ng higher out of the miserable condition which
we had fallen into through misfortunes on the foreign shore. When a star
came out, it came as a friend, and one that had been seen by friends of
old. When all the stars shone out, the hour at sea was cheerful, bright,
and joyous. Welby saw, or had in the mind's-eye, a day like many that we
experienced in the soft, clear "trades" on this voyage, when writing the
pretty lines:--

The twilight hours like birds flew by,
As lightly and as free,
Ten thousand stars were in the sky,
Ten thousand on the sea.

For every rippling, dancing wave,
That leaped upon the air,
Had caught a star in its embrace,
And held it trembling there.

"The days pass, and our ship flies fast upon her way."

For several days while sailing near the line we saw the constellations
of both hemispheres, but heading north, we left those of the south at
last, with the Southern Cross--most beautiful in all the heavens--to
watch over a friend.

Leaving these familiar southern stars and sailing toward constellations
in the north, we hoist all sail to the cheery breeze which carries us
on.

In this pleasant state of sailing with our friends all about us, we
stood on and on, never doubting once our pilot or our ship.

A phantom of the stately _Aquidneck_ appeared one night, sweeping by
with crowning skysails set, that fairly brushed the stars. No apparition
could have affected us more than the sight of this floating beauty, so
like the _Aquidneck_, gliding swiftly and quietly by, from her mission
to some foreign land--she, too, was homeward bound!

This incident of the _Aquidneck's_ ghost, as it appeared to us, passing
at midnight on the sea, left a pang of lonesomeness for a while.

But a carrier dove came next day, and perched upon the mast, as if to
tell that we had yet a friend! Welcome harbinger of good! you bring us
thoughts of angels.

The lovely visitor remained with us two days, off and on, but left for
good on the third, when we reached away from Avis Island, to which,
maybe, it was bound. Coming as it did from the east, and flying west
toward the island when it left, bore out the idea of the lay of sweet
singer Kingsley's "Last Buccaneer."

If I might but be a sea dove, I'd fly across the main
To the pleasant Isle of Avis, to look at it once again.

The old Buccaneer, it may have been, but we regarded it as the little
bird,