We generally had a fair wind; but in our tacks southward and northward more than once we sighted the shores of Europe on one side, and those of Africa on the other. The routine of transport life varied but little, so every passing sail became an object of speculation and interest. Day by day, and frequently night after night, we walked with the same person on the same side of the quarter-deck, turning short round at the taffrail aft, and at the break forward, to resume the same pace, without making a remark, for all our mutual ideas had been interchanged over and over again, and no tie remained, save that of being comrades, weary and worn alike, though each had his own thoughts, the mental orbit in which his soul revolved, and these were, perhaps, three thousand leagues astern. Every probable and possible phase of the war we had dissected and discussed, and the future excitement that was to come we contrasted impatiently with the quiet, inglorious monotony of the present, while the swift clipper cleft the classic waters of the Mediterranean. The monotony on board was once varied by a trivial practical joke played by M’Goldrick, the paymaster, on the colonel and some of the English officers, who had been deriding Scottish cookery. He produced at dinner a valuable preserve, which he had previously had carefully soldered up in a tin case, by the armourer’s aid, and which he had compounded with the joint assistance of the ship’s cook and my man, Pitblado. It was duly boiled, and produced at table in its tin case as a scarce and rare Parisian decoction—_Farina d’avoine au fromage_, or some such name; and after being partaken of by Beverley, Studhome, and the rest, was pronounced excellent, though it proved, after all, to be only a very ill-made Scotch haggis. In the Mediterranean we were frequently impressed by the extreme blueness of the water. It seemed to have a purer and deeper tint than we had ever seen it wear even in higher latitudes, especially when the weather was fine, and light scattered clouds were floating through the sky. About a fortnight after passing "old Gib," the outline of Malta and its sister isle, the abode of Calypso, rose from the morning sea on our lee bow; and during the whole of a lovely day our eyes were strained in that direction, watching that rocky shore of so many great and glorious memories—the last stronghold of Christian chivalry—the link between Britain and her Indian empire—our "halfway house" to the Bosphorus—with all its cannon bristling as the mistress of the Mediterranean and Levant.