While we lay here, our ship was well supplied with fruits from the shore. Large bunches of delicious grapes, abundance of sweet oranges, water-melons, chestnuts, and also a bountiful supply of gigantic onions, of peculiar flavor, enabled our crew to gratify their palates in true English style. Poor fellows! they feasted, laughed, and joked, as if the future had nothing to develop but fairy scenes of unmixed delight. Little thought, indeed, does your true tar take of the morrow. Amid these feastings, however, there rose something to trouble Macbeth, in the shape of an order from the admiral to prepare for a cruise. This was peremptory;--for a cruise, therefore, we prepared. Our boats’ crews came on board; the officers stored their larder with the means of gustatory gratifications; and we stood out to sea again. The port of Corunna, in Spain, was the next place at which we anchored. While lying in this spacious and safe harbor, our little world was thrown into temporary confusion by the loss of the ward-room steward, Mr. Sanders. This man could speak in the Spanish tongue; he had accumulated a considerable sum of money by long service, prize money, and an economy little known among sailors. For some cause or other he had become dissatisfied; so, one day, he engaged a Spaniard to run his boat under the stern of our frigate; dropping from one of the stern ports into the boat, unperceived by the officers, the wily Spaniards covered him with their loose garments and sails, and then conveyed him to the shore. This was running a great risk; for had he been detected in the act, or taken afterwards, he would have felt the cruel strokes of the lash. Fortunately for himself, he escaped without detection. From Corunna, we returned to Lisbon, where, at the cheerful cry of “All hands bring the ship to an anchor, ahoy!” we once more placed our frigate, taut and trim, under the battlements of the city. As servant to the surgeon, it was one part of my duty to perform the task of carrying his clothes to be washed. As great attention to cleanliness, in frequently changing their linen, is observed among naval officers, a good washerwoman is considered quite a desideratum. In attending to this matter for my master, I had frequent opportunities to go on shore. This gave me some means of observation. On one of my visits to our pretty laundress, I saw several Portuguese running along, gesticulating and talking with great earnestness. Being ignorant of their language, my washerwoman, who spoke good English, told me that a man had been stabbed, in consequence of some ground for jealousy, afforded by the conduct of the deceased. Hastening to the spot, I saw the wounded man, stretched out on a bed, with two gaping wounds in his side, the long knife, the instrument of the deed, lying by his side. The poor sufferer soon died. What was done to the murderer, I could not discover.