it, that the
sea-fowl we have seen, are hastening homeward to their nests, on some
not far distant shore."

So fully did I share this confidence, that I commenced a calculation as
to the time at which we might expect to reach land. Assuming it to have
been thirty miles distant at the time when we had seen its spectrum, by
means of the refraction, arising from a peculiar state of the
atmosphere; and estimating the rate of the current at three miles an
hour, I came to the conclusion that we could not even come in sight of
it until late at night; and it was therefore without any strong feeling
of disappointment, that I saw the day fast drawing to a close, and
nothing but sky and ocean yet visible.

The sun had already set, but the long tract of crimson and
flame-coloured clouds that glowed in the horizon where he had
disappeared, still reflected light enough to render it easy to
distinguish objects in that quarter, when I was startled by a cry of
joyful surprise from the native boy, who, shading his eyes with his
hands, was looking intently westward. After a long and earnest gaze, he
spoke eagerly to Arthur, who told us that the boy thought he saw his
native island. Looking in the same direction, I could make out nothing.
Arthur and Browne spoke of a brilliantly white line, narrow, but
well-defined against the horizon, as being all that they could see.
Morton, who was very keen-sighted, thought that he distinguished some
dark object beyond the low white band seen by the others. As the light
gradually failed, we lost sight of this appearance. It was some hours
before the rising of the moon, which we awaited with anxiety. She was
now at her full, and when at length she came up out of the sea, her
disc, broad and red like a beamless sun, seemed to rest, dilated to
preternatural size, upon the edge of the last wave that swelled against
the horizon. As she ascended the sky, she shed over the ocean a flood
of silvery light, less glaring, but almost as bright as that of day.
The wonderful brilliancy of the moon and stars within the tropics, is
one of the first things noted by the voyager. It may be owing to the
great clearness and transparency of the atmosphere: but whatever the
cause, their light is much more powerful than in higher latitudes, and
they seem actually nearer, and of greater magnitude.

We now looked eagerly westward again; the snow-white line, of which the
others had spoken, was by this time distinctly