"Besides, a sailor is more open to good impressions at sea than he is ashore. There, his mind is full of novelties and pleasures and has little room for good counsels, but on board ship in a long dreary voyage, he reflects upon his past life, sees his follies and is disposed to make resolutions of reform." "Well," said I, "that yarn seems to have raised the wind; there appears to be a light air on the port-quarter. You may square in the yards." The second mate assured me so positively that his story was true, that I wrote it out while fresh in my memory, word for word as he told it. The last day of the "doldrums" brought about an event which had a great effect in reviving our spirits. In the morning we made a ship ahead, bound the same way, and at noon we caught up with her and spoke her. It was the "Renown," from Calcutta bound to New York, ninety days out. After dinner we spied a sail on our starboard bow bound to the southward. She slowly drew down towards us and at two o'clock we saw a boat put off from the "Renown" to board her. It was now nearly calm and I thought I would imitate the example. So our quarter-boat was lowered, and the mate and four men pulled away towards the stranger. They reached her in about an hour and at four o'clock were again on board, with a large roll of Boston newspapers, and what was still better in the sailors estimation, a few pounds of tobacco. The mate reported her to be the bark "Nonantum," from Boston, bound to Buenos Ayres, twenty-six days out. He said the captain was in a dreadful stew about falling to leeward of Cape St. Roque. He had only had E.S.E. winds in place of north-east trades and had been unable to gain any longitude. Now he expected nothing less than a fortnight's dead beat. This had not put him in very good humor, and our men were told by his sailors that one of the crew had just upset a tar-bucket on deck, and the "old man" had been making the mate clean it up himself. The mate said the captain had his wife aboard and that she was cross-eyed and "as homely as a hedge-fence," but for all that he enjoyed making his best bow to her, and asking her how she liked going to sea, which he said was the only polite speech he could think of. "What a little world a ship is," I thought. "There they are in that bark shut up by themselves and engrossed with their own concerns as though there were nothing and nobody else in existence. They have their trials and growls and disagreements, just as we do and as the "Renown" does, but each of us as isolated as is one star from another. Well, poor fellow, I hope he'll fetch by St. Roque!"