It was indeed a glorious sight which opened around me. Right in the wake of the brigantine lay the city, still partly shrouded in the morning mists; while the back-ground was filled up by a range of uplands, through which a narrow opening disclosed where the Hudson rolled his arrowy course. To the right lay Governor’s Island, the East River, with its shipping, and the verdant shores of Long Island; while on the left rose up the bluff highlands of Staten Island, emerging, as it were, from a cloud of mist, and crowned with antique farm-houses, rich fields of verdant grass, and here and there a strip of woodland, as yet sparsely decked with its new-found leaves. Directly ahead were the Narrows, with the frowning heights on either hand; while a white, glittering line on the horizon without, and the long, undulating swell, heaving in through the streight, betokened our near approach to the ocean. A few sails flashed in the distance. All was still, beautiful, and serene. Occasionally, however, the measured sound of oars would give token of a passing fishing boat, or a snatch of a drinking song would float from some craft idly anchored in the stream. A few gulls screamed overhead. A flock of smaller water-fowl wheeled and settled on a strip of white, sandy beach just outside the Narrows. The surf broke with a hollow roar, in a long line of foam, along the neighboring coast; while out on the sea-board hung a dim haze, undulating slowly beneath the sun’s rays as he rose, blood-red, in the eastern horizon. “A fine breeze for our first day’s cruize,” said Westbrook, “and, faith, a deuce of a one it will be, if we should happen to be caught by one of King George’s frigates, and either be strung up for rebels at the yard arm, or stifled to death in one of his cursed prison hulks. What think you of the prospect, comrades, isn’t it pleasant?” “Pleasant do ye call it?” said Patrick O’Shaughnessy, a reefer of about my own age, who was a dangerously late emigrant to the colony, “shure, and it is rayther at my father’s hearth I would be, in dear, ould Ireland, afther all, if we’re to be thrated as rebels the day.” “Your father’s hearth, Pat,” said Westbrook, “and do you really mean to say that they have such things in Galway, or wherever else it was that you were suffered to eat potatoes in ignorance, until your guardians brought you out here on a speculation.” “By St. Patrick, your head must be hard,” said the irritated reefer, “and it’s well that my shillelah isn’t on the wrist—” “Pshaw! now you’re not angry, comrade mine,” said Westbrook, laughing good-humoredly, but repenting already of his reckless speech, “come, we’ve got a long cruize before us, and we shall have enough of quarrels with those rascally British, without getting up any among ourselves,” and he frankly extended his hand.