pueri,' till the
captain bade the sergeant-at-arms leave the lights burning for an
extra half hour; and 'Sir Roger de Coverley' was danced out, to the
great amusement of the foreigners, at actually half-past eleven.
After which unexampled dissipation, all went off to rest, promising
to themselves and their partners that they would get up at sunrise
to sight Sombrero.

But, as it befell, morning's waking brought only darkness, the heavy
pattering of a tropic shower, and the absence of the everlasting
roll of the paddle-wheels. We were crawling slowly along, in thick
haze and heavy rain, having passed Sombrero unseen; and were away in
a gray shoreless world of waters, looking out for Virgin Gorda; the
first of those numberless isles which Columbus, so goes the tale,
discovered on St. Ursula's day, and named them after the Saint and
her eleven thousand mythical virgins. Unfortunately, English
buccaneers have since then given to most of them less poetic names.
The Dutchman's Cap, Broken Jerusalem, The Dead Man's Chest, Rum
Island, and so forth, mark a time and a race more prosaic, but still
more terrible, though not one whit more wicked and brutal, than the
Spanish Conquistadores, whose descendants, in the seventeenth
century, they smote hip and thigh with great destruction.

The farthest of these Virgin Islands is St. Thomas's. And there
ended the first and longer part of a voyage unmarred by the least
discomfort, discourtesy, or dulness, and full of enjoyment, for
which thanks are due alike to captain, officers, crew, and
passengers, and also to our much-maligned friend the North-East
wind, who caught us up in the chops of the Channel, helped us
graciously on nearly to the tropic of Cancer, giving us a more
prosperous passage than the oldest hands recollect at this season,
and then left us for a while to the delicious calms of the edge of
the tropic, to catch us up again as the North-East Trade.

Truly, this voyage had already given us much for which to thank God.
If safety and returning health, in an atmosphere in which the mere
act of breathing is a pleasure, be things for which to be thankful,
then we had reason to say in our hearts that which is sometimes best
unsaid on paper.

Our first day in a tropic harbour was spent in what might be taken
at moments for a dream, did not shells and flowers remain to bear
witness to its reality. It was on Friday morning, December 17th,