Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

mentor; "the frigidity of the bath will have much effect in allaying the irritation of the nervous system. Take time, Doctor, and clear your mouth before you begin to speak." - At length, after much sputtering, and shaking, and hemming, the crest-fallen Doctor rose from his recumbent posture; and not finding words weighty enough to vent his indignation, stalked off between decks in great wrath; while his little tormentor bent over the hatchway, and advised him" to keep his own counsel," and promised that she would "never betray what had happened to the ladies in Philadelphia."

As they got into the warm latitudes, the steadiness of the trade winds, permitted them (while they were running a hundred and thirty or forty knots in twenty-four hours) to pursue their different avocations, as if they had been on terra firma, instead of Neptune's unstable dominions. Under the line, when the trade wind failed, the heat was intense. The sails flapped on the masts, for want of wind to fill them, and the fleet rolled in the swelling undulation, which accompanies a perfect calm; every rope

and mast clearly reflected in the bosom of the heaving ocean. The ships refused to obey the rudder, and floated at random, the head of one and the stern of another often threatening, when within the sphere of each other's attraction, to run foul, to their mutual damage.

. Nothing can exceed the splendor of the evening and morning appearance of the sun near the line; particularly at sun-set, when hasting to hide his head beneath the waves; a train of clouds, radiant in purple and gold, seem to canopy his bed, and throw a brilliancy and pomp of colour around him, not to be witnessed in northern climes.

Many a calm moonlight night, when that lovely planet shed long lines of silver radiance over the summer-seas, and the shadows of small flitting clouds fell like Islands on the main, have our friends sat on the poop, and watched the stars coming forth in their beauty, or leaned over the gangways to mark the ship's course tracked in light through seas of liquid flame, scintillating like the stars in heaven. Then thoughts of distant England, and the

land to which they were gliding arose within their mind. Colonel Howard watched the white foam as it came roaring round the bows, and mentally compared it to this world's society, turbulent, noisy, and evanescent; distant and scattered particles met by seeming accident; thrown together, they appeared to incorporate and become one mass; again an unlooked for swell disjointed them, and they parted, to sink in the ocean which gave them birth, or to run a separate course, and join no more. Bently looked to the conclusion of the voyage with mingled sentiments of hope and dread. He sometimes flattered himself that it might be but the beginning of brighter scenes for him; and again the bare possibility that it might for ever remove Elizabeth Percy from his sight, would intrude to torment him.

[ocr errors]

CHAPTER II.

So lovely seem'd

That landscape! and of pure, now purer air
Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires
Vernal delight, and joy, able to drive

All sadness, but despair: now gentle gales,

Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense

Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils.

PARADISE LOST.

WHEN the fleet was within a few days' sail of the Cape of Good Hope, Captain Kentledge received a communication from their Commodore, ordering him to go in and take on board troops for Bengal, as one of the ships appointed for that purpose had an infectious fever on board, which would prevent the Committee of Health from permitting her to hold any intercourse with the shore. The season was too far advanced to admit of their anchoring in Table Bay, as it was the commencement of the Cape

winter, that is to say, the beginning of May, when they had reason to expect tremendous weather on that exposed coast; they therefore resolved to make Simon's Bay, on the opposite side.

A fine fresh breeze carried them into False Bay, and they shot rapidly past the majestic mass of rocky mountains which guards its entrance, amongst which "Hang-lip" stands conspicuous, frowning over the scene, and projected in bare and steep defiance into the sea. The sheer descent of these mountains into deep water renders the whole coast very formidable. For miles they extend like a bare and stony wall, barring all approach from the sea. The Cumberland was soon quietly brought to anchor in Simon's Bay, one of the many small creeks by which False Bay is indented, and which, from its sheltered situation, is a safe and commodious harbour at most seasons of the year. Simon's Town lay before them; its neat, clean, white-washed houses seeming to stand upon a long narrow shelf cut in the face of the mountains, and looking down upon its own little bay,

« ZurückWeiter »