The flying-fish when first I saw them leap
And flash like swallows over the blue deep;
The rose-red sunset, or the Sunday duff,
Or--but enumeration cries "Enough."

There is no Mary in the Atlantic, true,
Nor cellared bookshop to be foraged through.
But as I said, at least I've found the sun
And idle times--even this will soon be done;
A corner where no rags-and-bones apply,
Nor postman comes, nor poultry droop and die.

X

The South-East Trade was blowing fresh next day, if a damp clammy rush of
hot air deserves the term. The threatened heavy rains of the Doldrums had
not come; the heavy heat subdued talk at table. Cloud and sultry steamy
haze had hung about us during the morning; at two or thereabouts the
first land seen by the _Bonadventure_ since her first day's stubborn
entry into the English Channel came into view. My view was at first none
at all; but encouraged by Bicker and with his glasses I could make out
the island of Fernando Noronha, twenty miles away to the south-east. A
tall peak and the high ground about it for a space gave the illusion
of some great cathedral, a Mont St. Michel seen by Cotman faintly
forthshadowed; then, the willing fancy rebuked, I discerned its low
coasts of rock, inhospitable and mist-haunted.

This singular crag breaking out of the mid-ocean, I knew, was a convict
settlement. "Life sentences" were safely mewed up here. At length we
were abeam of this melancholy place, while the sun seemed to make a show
of its white prison camp, at a distance of twelve or thirteen miles.
It would have been hard not to imagine the despair of men condemned to
such a prison. The peak's stern finger might have struck with awe the
first navigators to approach it. To see the immutable pillar in every
sunset and at every sunrise, surveying all the drudgery, the emblem of
perpetual soullessness, must be an unnerving punishment. The constant
processions of ships, to whom Fernando Noronha is a welcome mark, with
their smoke vanishing swiftly to north or south, could scarcely tantalize
more?

The rough overhanging pinnacle faded again, and evening fell. Leaning
with the third mate over the bridge canvas, while the moon, now waxing,
riding through the frontiers of a black cloud, cast a dim avenue over
the sea, and from other dishevelled clouds a few quiet drops came down,
was a most peaceful luxury. About the bows the water was lit up by sudden
flashes gon