The day after leaving Angier Point, we were in the open ocean, with a stiff gale from S. E. driving us rapidly towards our homes, our wives and children. It is a delightful sensation which the mariner experiences on clearing port for his homeward passage, after a long and toilsome voyage. His home, his family, his little prattlers, and all the delightful associations of a happy fireside, crowd upon his imagination, which is cleared by long absence of all the asperities and disagreeables of real life. He flatters himself that he shall soon fold to his heart the wife of his bosom and the children of his love, improved in beauty, virtue, and affection; fancies a thousand enjoyments which the gains of his voyage will enable him to procure, and forgets the numberless vexations attendant upon business, and upon the duties of man in civilized society, encumbered with useless ceremonies and pernicious customs. Mr Slim had been confined to his state-room whilst we lay at Whampoa; and no more intercourse was allowed between our people and their countrymen, than was necessary to keep up appearances. Our men were particularly cautioned not to drink grog whilst out of the ship, lest it should make them too talkative. They kept this injunction tolerably well for sailors; but one of them had nearly betrayed the whole secret, after drinking a second can of grog on board a Boston ship, where the Yankees seemed determined to get it all out of him. Happily one of his shipmates forced him away, but not until enough had escaped him to produce an hundred absurd stories amongst the shipping in the river.