About six o'clock on a beautiful Wednesday evening, early in the month of May, our gallant and saucy frigate turned her bows seaward and slowly steamed away from amidst the fleet of little boats that--crowded with the unhappy wives and sweethearts of the sailors--had hung around us all the afternoon. Puffing and blowing a great deal, and apparently panting to be out and away at sea, the good ship nevertheless left her anchorage but slowly, and withal reluctantly, her tears falling thick and fast on the quarter-deck as she went. The band was playing a slow and mournful air, by way of keeping up our spirits. _I_ had no friends to say farewell to, there was no tear-bedimmed eye to gaze after me until I faded in distance; so I stood on the poop, leaning over the bulwarks, after the fashion of Vanderdecken, captain of the Flying Dutchman, and equally sad and sorrowful-looking. And what did I see from my elevated situation? A moving picture, a living panorama; a bright sky sprinkled with a few fleecy cloudlets, over a blue sea all in motion before a fresh breeze of wind; a fleet of little boats astern, filled with picturesquely dressed seamen and women waving handkerchiefs; the long breakwater lined with a dense crowd of sorrowing friends, each anxious to gain one last look of the dear face he may never see more. Yonder is the grey-haired father, yonder the widowed mother, the affectionate brother, the loving sister, the fond wife, the beloved sweetheart,--all are there; and not a sigh that is sighed, not a tear that is shed, not a prayer that is breathed, but finds a response in the bosom of some loved one on board. To the right are green hills, people-clad likewise, while away in the distance the steeple of many a church "points the way to happier spheres," and on the flagstaff at the port-admiral's house is floating the signal "Fare thee well." The band has ceased to play, the sailors have given their last ringing cheer, even the echoes of which have died away, and faintly down the wind comes the sound of the evening bells. The men are gathered in little groups on deck, and there is a tenderness in their landward gaze, and a pathos in their rough voices, that one would hardly expect to find. "Yonder's my Poll, Jack," says one. "Look, see! the poor lass is crying; blowed if I think I'll ever see her more." "There," says another, "is _my_ old girl on the breakwater, beside the old cove in the red nightcap." "That's my father, Bill," answers a third. "God bless the dear old chap?" "Good-bye, Jean; good-bye, lass. Ah! she won't hear me. Blessed if I don't feel as if I could make a big baby of myself and cry outright." "Oh! Dick, Dick," exclaims an honest-looking tar; "I see'd my poor wife tumble down; she had wee Johnnie in her arms, and--and what will I do?"