There was no land in sight, and no vessel, nothing but that gently heaving, golden ocean; but I imagined that the Elizabeth Islands were concealed behind haze on the horizon, and that I was bound home across the Bay. I wondered how my father would seem, and what he was doing at that moment; and I saw in imagination my mother’s face as she caught sight of me. I knew what she would be doing at that moment. She would be cooking supper—perhaps it was half an hour too early to be cooking supper, but soon she would be cooking supper; {138} or frying doughnuts, although she was more apt to do that in the morning; or making soda biscuit. I could just see the great pan of them, and mother stooping before the open oven door. We had a plenty of good, homely food, and mother’s soda biscuits were—well, they were mother’s soda biscuits. There was nothing like them. We got into Fayal in about a week. Wright was taken ashore the first thing, and put into the hands of a surgeon. We left him there. His hip was pretty bad, and he was really sick besides. He had consumption, although he would not acknowledge it. He went back to New Bedford on the tender, which left after we did, and I am afraid we all forgot him quickly. Lupo was delivered to our consul, and was also sent back on the tender, according to the best recollection I have of the matter to be tried in New Bedford—or in the Federal Court in that district. I had to sign and swear to a deposition, which was merely a copy of my journal of the fight. When that duty was over I felt much better, for it had weighed on my mind for some days, although it turned out to be nothing but a formality, and the consul was very kind and friendly, as was everybody concerned except Lupo. I do not know what became of him. The tender was waiting for us. I finished up my journal, so far, and my letters. The letters were not long, for all my narrative was contained in my journal. There was a long letter from my mother, filled with the news of home since I had left, and with the kind of thing that mothers’ letters are always filled with. Boys treat them carelessly sometimes, and affect not to value them, but they always do value them, I think. My father had written a postscript to my mother’s letter, not long, for my father never wrote long letters, and was not given to that form of self-expression—to any form of self-expression, for that matter. I wore that letter to a rag, carrying it about with me, and reading it and re-reading it. It brought {139} back my homesickness. I rather cherished my homesickness, I think. We had about a hundred barrels of oil to send home, and to be put aboard the tender, supplies and provisions to get, and a whaleboat if we could, and two men to recruit to take the places of Wright and Lupo, and we were likely to stay there four or five days at least.