At noon we were six hundred and fifty miles from Sandy Hook, in latitude 38° 58′ north; longitude, 60° 14′ west. +May 15+ Glorious weather, with southwest winds as fresh as ever; it is growing much warmer, and the temperature of the water has risen to 71°, making it possible to bathe in it without much gasping. Shortly after breakfast the captain asked us if we wouldn’t like to go forward and see him catch a bonito, as there were several playing about the forefoot. So we went up on the forecastle head, sat down on the gammoning-iron, and watched the skipper creep out on the bowsprit with a cod-line and a hook baited with a bit of rag in his hand. Then he went through various manœuvres necessary in the capture of these deep-sea fish, and incidentally nearly manœuvred himself off the jib-boom. The scheme consisted in dropping the rag swiftly down till it touched the water, and instantly jerking it upward again, to excite the imagination of the fish, I suppose. They looked very fine darting about at great speed several feet beneath the surface, being of a brilliant hue, and at first we thought that they were young dolphins,--that is, the dolphin of sailors. At length, after innumerable vain efforts, accompanied with much hard breathing and damning of the fish’s eyes, the captain hooked one and hauled him up, snapping and fighting till he was dropped into a gunny sack held by one of the men. He looked like a plump mackerel, weighed six pounds, and will afford a little variety to our evening repast. This afternoon the skipper said that I ought to have a pair of sea-slippers; so he vanished into the slop-chest (the technical name for the apartment where all sorts of wearing apparel for the crew is kept) and emerged with the most uncomfortable looking foot-gear that I ever beheld. The slippers (?) were made of immensely thick red grain-leather, with heavy, pegged soles, as inflexible as plate armor and as easy-looking as Belgian sabots. The captain said that they were as tight as sea-boots, if I kept the water from flowing over the tops, adding, “I’ll tell you what I do: in cold, wet weather I just haul a pair of heavy socks right over the outside of the slippers and make boots of ’em.” At a quarter to five this afternoon we sighted a steamer on the lee bow, and as there was a chance of signalling her, and she was bound to the westward, we put our helm up a little and kept away a couple of points. At 5.30 she was abreast of us, and we hoisted our number and “report me all well,” to which she hoisted her answering pennant. She was a very large English cargo-boat, one of that new style of tramp freighters with one funnel, two pole-masts, and a great sheer. She seemed to be making more than ten knots (though the snow-drift under her bows indicated about twenty-five), and should therefore reach New York in time to be reported in next Wednesday’s papers. Latitude at noon, 38° 31′ north; longitude, 55° 2′ west. +May 16+