As soon as the boat was clear of the brig, which was only waiting for them to make sail, and whose sails were all loose, but held in their places by the men who had unloosed them, were let fall together, and walking away with all the halyards at once, the Scorpion was under all sail, and standing out of the harbor before Don Manuel’s boat reached the shore. Francisca and her father both felt very much the loss of Clara and De Vere’s company; but knowing it was useless to make vain lamentations, they returned home. The thoughts of the many things she would see, and the images of the proud beauties of the English court, whom she would soon be with, and she hoped outshine, so occupied the mind of Clara, that she had parted from her father and sister without much regret. But as she stood on the quarter-deck, and saw the objects on shore gradually grow smaller and smaller—first the trees, then the light-house, and eventually the blue shores of the now distant island itself disappear from her sight, as if they had all sunk to the depths of the ocean, and looking around, observed nothing but an expanse of clouds and water, upon which the brig was but a speck—a sudden and complete sense of her bereavement oppressed her, and she burst into tears; for though she knew her husband was near, there is something so inexpressibly melancholy in leaving for the first time the home of your childhood, and the land of your nativity, that, for awhile, she could not avoid giving way to her grief. But De Vere soothed her, by tales of the sea, the distant and new country she was about to visit, and by promising it would be but a short time ere she should return. Hardly had she regained her composure when she was disagreeably affected in another way. Father Neptune, not allowing even the most beautiful and fair to travel over his domains without paying tribute; and sick, nauseated, with her head swimming and aching as if it would split, she was led to her state-room, thinking she would give all she possessed in the world to be once more in the house she had so lately left. When she recovered, and again came on deck, it was a warm, bright morning. The brig had just left the Gulf Stream. There was a fresh breeze, but the sea, unruffled by it, was heaving in long, rolling waves. Shoals of porpoises and black-fish were tumbling about in their uncouth gambols—interesting, because new, to Clara, but to the sailors more than uninteresting, as they prognosticated an approaching storm. The fragile and graceful nautilus, also, was seen expanding its tiny sail; numerous sea-birds were flying about, or for a moment resting on the water; and the Scorpion, as she moved rapidly along, seemed “a thing of life.”