What a change can be wrought at sea in a few hours! At eleven yesterday morning we were motionless upon a glassy sea; eight hours later we were rushing southward under the topsails before a moderate gale! “And now the storm-blast came, and he Was tyrannous and strong; He struck with his o’ertaking wings, And chased us south along.” Throughout yesterday afternoon the breeze steadily freshened, and by four o’clock the sky-sails had been stowed, followed at five by the royals, while after supper the gaskets were put on the three top-gallant-sails and the cross-jack was hauled up; the ship logging exactly twelve knots between six and seven o’clock, the best which we have done yet, the wind being true and steady from west-northwest, a little abaft the beam. I have seldom seen a finer sight than that presented by the ship as she went bounding away south by west before this grand breeze blowing straight off the pampas of Patagonia; the moon, now at first quarter, casting a broad wake of silver radiance over the short, steep, foaming seas which had arisen as though by magic, and were already snarling and showing their teeth up above the weather-quarter. By ten o’clock the spray had begun to bury the waist of the ship once more, while at intervals during the night a deep, heavy boom told us that something beside mere spray was tumbling over the weather-side. When we went on deck this morning there was no diminution in the wind, though it had shifted into the west; but as the captain had kept off to south, it was still on the beam. The maintop-mast-stay-sail had been set, and we found the watch in the act of hauling out the spencer on the gaff, and we presently had an opportunity of seeing this piece of canvas in actual use for the first time. Its cut was excellent, and, together with the stay-sail, steadied the ship wonderfully. The main-sail was reefed, so that the arch of this great sail, which curved over the ship like the crescent of the moon, was fully thirty feet above the deck. Although still carrying the six topsails and the foresail, we were not taking anything but huge volumes of spray aboard, in spite of the fact that the surface of the ocean to windward showed long, parallel streaks of foam, like the cross-section of a rasher of bacon,--an appearance observed only when it is really blowing hard.