Wrapped in my cloak, I stretched myself at night upon deck. My eyes contemplated the stars above my head. The inflated sail threw back upon me the coolness of the breeze which rocked me beneath the dome of heaven: half dozing and pushed on by the wind, I was wafted towards new skies and new dreams. The passengers on board ship afford a different sort of society from that of the crew: they belong to another element; their destinies are of the land. Some travel in search of fortune, others of rest; these are returning home, those leaving it; others cross the seas in order to become acquainted with the manners of nations, to study science and art. People have time to know one another in this wandering hostelry which travels with the traveller, to have many adventures, to breed antipathies, to contract friendships. When those young women come and go, born of mixed English and Indian blood, who add to the beauty of Clarissa the delicacy of Sacontala, then are formed chains which are bound and unbound by the fragrant breezes of Ceylon, sweet and light as themselves. * [Sidenote: Francis Tulloch.] Among my fellow-passengers was an Englishman. François Tulloch[450] had served in the artillery: he was a painter, a musician, a mathematician; he spoke several languages. The Abbé Nagault, Superior of the Sulpicians, had met the Anglican officer and made him a Catholic: he was taking his neophyte to Baltimore. I became intimate with Tulloch: as I was at that time a profound "Philosopher," I invited him to return to his parents. The spectacle that lay before our eyes transported him with admiration. We used to rise at night, when the deck was given up to the officer of the watch and a few sailors who smoked their pipes in silence: _Tuta aequora silent._[451] The vessel rolled at the will of the slow and silent waves, while gleams of fire ran with a white foam along her sides. Thousands of stars shining in the sombre azure of the celestial dome, a boundless sea, infinity in the sky and on the waves! Never has God confused me with His greatness more than during those nights when I had immensity over my head and immensity beneath my feet. Westerly winds, interspersed with calms, delayed our progress. On the 4th of May, we had reached only the level of the Azores. On the 6th, at about eight o'clock in the morning, we came in sight of the Isle of the Peak; this volcano long commanded unnavigated seas[452]: a useless beacon by night, an unseen landmark by day.