286 CREW OF THE VINCENNES. extend their companionship and affection. The principles, habits, generous feelings, and pious disposition of such men, more effectually secure the warmth of my heart than the highest attainments of mind, fascination of manners, and attraction of rank, where they are not to be found. I delight to show and prove myself the friend of such and new interest is given to our homeward voyage by the discovery, that there is at least one on board, beyond my immediate mess-table, who is disposed to cultivate my friendship in connection with the spirit and immediate duties of my office. As to the crew in general, I have never been brought in contact with any set of men apparently so hopeless in morals, and so beyond the influence of every good impression. A small portion of them only were shipped in the United States. The rest have been gathered principally from the South American coast-wanderers upon the earth, without a country or a home. I have long felt great discouragement, as to any decisive benefit to them from the discharge of the services of my station, still I shall be enabled, on this point, I trust, to act upon the principle, that, "Our doubts are traitors, And often make us lose the good, we else might win, GATHERING OF A STORM. 287 LETTER II. ARRIVAL IN THE CHINESE SEA. U. S. Ship Vincennes, at sea, THE early part of our voyage from Oahu was most uninteresting, characterized chiefly by light and variable winds, an excess of heat, and slow progress; and, but for the blandness and serenity of nights, bright "With stars unnumbered, And a moon exceeding beautiful,“ and the irresistibly soothing associations connected with their loveliness, both on land and at sea, we should all have become a prey to ennui and the mal du pays. On the evening of the 24th,- however, we were relieved from the listlessness of the preceding month, by the sudden rising of a storm, which came raging upon us, just before night, with the fury of a tempest. In less than an hour, in place of a clear, blue sky, and a dead calm, a scud, "thick and palpable," almost as the darkness of Egypt, was rushing over us before a driving wind. A streak of lurid and unnatural light along the western horizon was alone to be seen; while the sky was every where filled with wild and ragged clouds, moving swiftly in various directions, portending some fearful exhibition of their 288 CHRISTMAS-EVE AT SEA. violence. The sea, too, suddenly rose high; foaming, and roaring, and dashing on board our ship, as she plunged and rolled in its irregular and broken swells. Add to this the bustle of two hundred men, in preparation for the worst that might come; the rushing of the wind through the masts and rigging; the bawling of the brazen-mouthed trumpet ; the answers and calls from aloft, coming faintly and indistinctly on the ear, as those uttering them were swept widely and swiftly through the air, in the uneasiness of the vessel under the pressure of the blast; the flapping and cracking of the sails in reefing; the flying of hats and handkerchiefs overboard, and you will have a total of circumstances as appropriate to a Christmas-eve at sea, as the snow storm, keen temperature, and blustering north-west wind are to the same season in Otsego. But, ah! for us there was no blazing hearth nor cheerful fireside; no closely curtained parlor nor happy family circle to join, after having gazed on the sublimity and wildness without, till dripping with the peltings of the storm-but a wet and gloomy ship; a gunroom, with groaning timbers and bulk-heads, and lights flickering in the wind, till their highest service was to make darkness visible; chairs, tables, boxes, and books, fetching away and driving across the deck at every roll, with an occasional crash and jingle in the steward's pantry, as if all his bottles and crockery had gone ên masse; and last, though not least, an uncomfortable berth, in which it was impossible to lie still enough to sleep, but to which it was necessary to cling till morning, while every LADRONE AND BASHEE ISLANDS. 289 wave, sweeping in its fury along the ship's side, muttered its threat so closely and so loudly in the ear, that if from weariness one should fall into a doze, he could scarce fail of being roused from it the next moment, by dreaming of being drowned. Such was the night, and such the morning; and ever since we have had a continuance of weather in some degree similar. On the evening of the 19th inst. we passed the most northern of the Ladrone Islands, between Pagon and Agrigan, at a distance of fifteen or twenty miles. Both lofty islands, the last so much so as frequently to be seen at a distance of sixty miles. It was near night when we descried them, and nothing but a dim outline was to be seen against the sky. Yesterday morning we left another landmark, in the northern Bashee Islands, behind us. These are considered one of the barriers of the "Mer la Grande," as the French very properly style the Pacific, and one of the portals of the "Celestial Empire," a principal city of which we expect soonto visit. Five of the cluster were in sight at breakfast time; insulated rocks, uninhabited and uncovered, except on the highest points, by a little grass and moss; and as we passed thein, and thus entered the Chinese Sea, many of the gentlemen on the quarter-deck bade kind adios in Spanish to the Pacific, on whose waters they had for three years been floating-to which I added an aroha ino, as the band gave us "Auld lang Syne." YESTERDAY, a disastrous accident befel one of our crew. The morning was fine, and impatient of reaching the island of Macoa, the port of our present destination, we were crowding all sail, when the approach of a sudden squall caused a hasty order for the lighter canvas to be taken in. In accomplishing this, one of the maintopmast studding sails went over board, through the mismanagement of the man at the haliards. The ship was moving rapidly through the water; and the moment the canvas came in contact with the sea, the rigging attached to it was dragged swiftly from the deck, and with such violence, that one of the lines, becoming entangled about the leg of a marine who had inadvertently stepped into its coil, severed the limb instantly from his body, as he was hurled against the bulwarks, and would have been carried overboard, had he not been seized by some of his shipmates. The crash, at the same time, of the studding sail boom, as the weight of the sail in the water carried it away upon the yard, and the agitated call down the hatchway for Dr. Malone, led those of us below to suppose for the moment, that some one had fallen from aloft in the loss of a spar, and had been dashed |