We arose from our knees, and as we did so the piano in the saloon was touched, and a clear, rich and beautiful voice began to sing. We listened. I seemed to know the air. It was as though there was a magic in it to run a thrill through my lifeless memory. I harkened with parted lips, breathing fast and deep. The voice of the singer ceased. * * * * * ‘What song is that?’ I asked. ‘It is “Home, Sweet Home,”’ answered Alice Lee. And now for some days nothing of any moment happened. A strong wind blew over the ship’s quarter, and drove her fast through the seas. Wide overhanging spaces of canvas called studding-sails were set. They projected far beyond the ship’s bulwarks, they swelled like the sides of balloons to the sweep of the wind, and thus impelled, with one sail mounting to another until, at the extremity of the ship, the vast spread of milk-white canvas seemed to blot out half the sky, the _Deal Castle_ sprang through the billows, whitening a whole acre of water in advance of her as the crushing curtsey of her bows drove the sapphire roaring into snow. In this time I loved to stand alone beside the rail gazing down upon the waters, and watching the wild configurations of the headlong passage of foam. Was there no inspiration to visit memory from those splendid and dazzling shapes of spume which rushed in endless processions along the ship’s side? My imagination beheld many things in those white forms. They were far more numerous than the pictures painted by the clouds upon the sky. I beheld the gleaming shapes of swimming women--vast trees spreading into a thousand branches--the forms of castles and churches and of helmeted men; the heads of horses, and many other such phantasies of foam. They came and went swift as the wink of the eye, yet I saw them, and I would cry in my heart, ‘Is there nothing in this sweeping throng of dissolving and re-forming shapes to flash an idea upon my mind, to recall _something_--Oh it matters not what!--that might serve as a point of fire amid the darkness upon which to fix my eyes?’ The passengers without exception were exceedingly kind to me. If ever I happened to be alone on deck one or another would procure me a chair, lend me a book, stand awhile and chat with me. I was never vexed with intrusion, by idle sympathy, by aimless questioning. Now and again Mrs. Webber would talk till she teased me, but a world of good nature underlay her vanity, and though often she made me wish myself alone, yet I knew that, after the Lees, she was the kindest friend I had in the ship.