For several days after this nothing of moment occurred. Finally we found ourselves some two hundred miles to the northward and eastward of the Mona Passage, and I was debating within myself whether to bear up and go back over the ground which I had just traversed, or to continue on and have a look at Porto Rico. But while I was thinking over the question, the lookout in the fore crosstrees reported a sail to windward, quickly succeeded by several others, whereupon we made sail and shaped a course that would enable us to get a somewhat clearer view of them, and, if necessary, to intercept them. The lookout aloft soon reported that the leading ship was under short canvas, while those which immediately followed her were covered to their trucks, and showing studdingsails as well, from which piece of information it was not difficult for me to guess that the strangers to windward consisted of a convoy of merchantmen, with its escort of men-o'-war. This conjecture of mine soon proved to be correct, for within half-an-hour of their first appearance the leading ships were in sight from the deck, and we made out the biggest of them to be a 74-gun ship, the others in sight obviously being merchantmen. As we closed, with ensign and pennant hoisted, the commodore signalled me to come alongside and send a boat aboard, which I did, going in the boat myself to see what news I could pick up. I thus learned that the ship I had boarded was the _Goliath_, the captain of which was the commodore of the squadron of convoying ships, consisting of--in addition to the _Goliath_--the frigates _Tourmaline_ and _Spartiate_, and the gun-brigs _Vulcan, Wolverine, Spitfire_, and _Tortoise_; the convoy consisting of three hundred and eighty-seven sail of all sorts, bound to the various West Indian ports. I informed the commodore of the nature of the duty upon which I had been sent out by the Admiral on the station, and inquired whether any suspicious craft had been sighted during the passage; to which he grimly replied in the affirmative, but added that they had all been accounted for, and would be found, with prize-crews aboard them, in the main body of the fleet. I stayed on board the seventy-four for a couple of hours, gathering what news the inmates of the ward-room could give me; during which the _Wasp_, under boom-foresail and fore-staysail only, easily kept company with the ponderous two-decker, looking in comparison with her "no bigger as my thumb," as the negroes would say. She excited a great deal of curiosity, on account of her very peculiar model, and likewise a very considerable amount of admiration as she swept along lightly and buoyantly as a seagull over the long undulations of the heavy swell that was running. It was the first time that I had ever beheld her under sail, from outside her own bulwarks, and although, looked down upon from the lofty poop of the _Goliath_, she seemed to be the merest