A typical day of the low latitudes this. To me there is ever something wonderfully impressive in an absolute calm, when no breath of wind tarnishes the surface, and the only evidence that the ship is not resting upon a plane of glass is to be found in an occasional slow, deep surge, hardly ever absent when in the profound depths of the ocean. All around the northern and eastern horizon hung superb, dense masses of violet cloud, descending at intervals in steaming showers, while broad on the port bow lay becalmed a large square rigger, hull down, but lifting at times on the swell till we could see her courses hanging in the buntlines in easy, graceful curves. Nearer and nearer, by imperceptible degrees, she approached, till at eleven o’clock she lay not more than three miles distant,--a magnificent four-masted bark, bearing the stamp of the Clyde upon her powerful iron hull, and presenting, with her double top-gallant-yards and splendid sheer, a perfect illustration of the modern sailing ship, of the largest and finest class. How beautiful and stately and proud she looked as she floated along, apparently conscious that she was homeward bound, and fully aware that she was one of the “swift shuttles of an empire’s loom” which Kipling mentions in those fine verses “The Coastwise Lights of England!” “I’ll bet there’s nothin’ ter eat aboard there but rice, hard bread, and water,” said a croaking voice at my elbow, and the greasy countenance of the grizzly old mate was thrust suddenly into the foreground, totally destroying the beauty of the scene. Mr. Goggins (always Mr.) never loses a chance to blackguard his native country, which shows better than anything else what sort of creature he is. We made our number to the ship, to which she replied with her own name, but which we unfortunately could not make out, though, owing to the position of our flags, she may have been able to do so. It is pleasant to study a great vessel like this, and to wonder how old she is and what great gales she must have witnessed in her career, walking up and down the world; now perhaps carrying five thousand tons of grain from California to the starving multitudes in India; now beating her way round tempestuous Agulhas, full to the hatches with tea and silk; now struggling against the thunderous southwesterly monsoon in the Bay of Bengal, homeward bound from Calcutta with twenty thousand bales of flossy jute in her great body. God speed the gallant ship! Latitude, 4° 24′ north; longitude, 29° 35′ west. +June 2+