After leaving these vessels, we squared our yards, and rolled before the delightful southeast trades (the elysium of the seafaring-man) towards St. Helena, taking it very easy--only sending aloft the studding-sails on the foremast and foretopmasts, and at night jogging along under easy sail in that direction: it being our intention to make a short stay at that rock-bound isle for letters, and then to crack on everything for home. On arriving within a few degrees of the world-renowned prison-rock of the great Conqueror, sail was reduced, and the ship luffed to the wind. The moon being on the change, our captain, anxious to get one more sperm whale, determined to let no means within his power remain unemployed for that purpose. This halt in our homeward course was not received with a very good grace. Except the captain, everybody else aboard our vessel had calculated upon a direct passage homeward. But this was in perfect keeping with his conduct throughout the voyage: at one time assuring us that we would be bound homeward on a certain date, and inducing us to write to that effect by his representations, in which at the time of making them he was perhaps sincere. But he suffered his opinions to be changed by the slightest cause. If he gammoned with a ship, he found in her skipper an adviser, who recommended to him a prolific whaling-ground--one on which, he was told, he could not fail to take five hundred barrels of oil, probably, even altogether fill up. These golden visions he received and credited, (although I cannot but think that it was against his better judgment--for, certainly, if a vacillating, he was not a stupid man,) and away he would go to the promised El Dorado. Thus he exhausted his own as well as the patience of every one else by a fruitless search for sperm whales that had been long ago captured! Where we were now stopping was the ground on which the barque Monmouth, two years since, captured two hundred barrels of oil; and hence our captain imagined that we would be likely to do the same; but in this there was about as much probability of any success and remuneration at all commensurate to the time and trouble expended, as the Kidd treasure seekers have received for their laborious and chimerical search.