Another very excellent run was the result of yesterday’s work, even though we could not steer a better course than southwest, for we made not far from three degrees of latitude, finding at noon that Bahia bore west, distant one hundred and twenty miles, so that we are at the moment some distance off the land. Last night was one of the grandest that we ever remember at sea. A strong breeze whistled from the southeast at an angle of about forty-five degrees to the long southerly swell, making a rather confused sea in which we sheared about considerably, our high, powerful bows crushing the steep head seas which came rushing ceaselessly at us, piling up on either hand a hissing wall of foam and then flinging it far away on both bows, which, meeting the next on-rushing wave, and impinging one against the other, would shoot up to an astonishing height, to be driven back again in a perfect hurricane of spray, which drenched the forecastle-head, completely obliterating for the moment the lookout, who emerged from these showers like the shade of Neptune, with the water dripping from his oil-skins in the moonlight in glistening rivulets. The moon herself was full almost at the moment of rising, shining with so great an effulgence as to necessitate the partial closing of the eyelids if one looked at the disk, and casting a weird light upon the abysses of a heavy rain-squall crossing our stern. I don’t know when we have enjoyed an evening as much as this one, lying at full length in deck-chairs, watching the mizzen-truck roll through the stars in tremendous arcs, and listening to the bursting of the seas against the bows and the hissing of the water as it rushed under the counter. There is but one word which describes it,--ideal.