we know but little or nothing. The old tars have been singing to-day, Mackerel skies and mares' tails Make lofty ships take in their sails. Last night, as we were retiring, the sky was banking up black clouds, which indicates a nor'-wester. Now, when we look across the crested surface of the deep, dark sea, our thoughts are too sacred for bosom-confidants, and too serious to bear much sounding by ourselves, being shadowed by forebodings, not unmixed with melancholy, when we think on the fate of many who have sailed before us. Our rough old captain, who commences his day's duties before sunrise by giving the steward a cursing for what he has done or left undone, as a kind of recreation when he is drinking his coffee, has been giving his oracle, the barometer, some mysterious looks all day. The sun has gone to her home in the west, and we now feel that a night of darkness--it may be destruction--has drawn her deepest shadows over us. The wind is blowing a gale, above which is heard at the wheel aft the same cross old captain screaming his orders through the storm-trumpet, which sound dismal as death: "Lower the foresail!" "Take down the topsails!" "Put out a watch!" "Let her drive before the wind!" Old Neptune has commenced his fearful frolics in earnest, rolling the white caps in every direction. The vessel has commenced plunging through a trackless pathway, while the sea boils like a pot. And whistling o'er the bending mast, Loud sings the fresh'ning blast. It is when messengers from the realms of King Storm are abroad in the land--when the sea rises at his call, and the winds meet from their hidden coverts, to exercise their strength and contend for victory--that the poetry of sailing on deep water vanishes, and we look stern reality in the face, and feel the danger of being swallowed up, which overbalances all the adventurous spirit for sight-seeing.