apace, the excitement increases; the faint and shadowy
forms of distant objects grow gradually clearer. Where before some tall and
misty mountain peak was seen, we now descry patches of deepest blue and
sombre olive; the mellow corn and the waving woods, the village spire and
the lowly cot, come out of the landscape; and like some well-remembered
voice, they speak of home. The objects we have seen, the sounds we have
heard a hundred times before without interest, become to us now things that
stir the heart.

For a time the bright glare of the noonday sun dazzles the view and renders
indistinct the prospect; but as evening falls, once more is all fair and
bright and rich before us. Rocked by the long and rolling swell, I lay
beside the bowsprit, watching the shore-birds that came to rest upon the
rigging, or following some long and tangled seaweed as it floated by; my
thoughts now wandering back to the brown hills and the broad river of my
early home, now straying off in dreary fancies of the future.

How flat and unprofitable does all ambition seem at such moments as these;
how valueless, how poor, in our estimation, those worldly distinctions
we have so often longed and thirsted for, as with lowly heart and simple
spirit we watch each humble cottage, weaving to ourselves some story of its
inmates as we pass!

The night at length closed in, but it was a bright and starry one, lending
to the landscape a hue of sombre shadow, while the outlines of the objects
were still sharp and distinct as before. One solitary star twinkled near
the horizon. I watched it as, at intervals disappearing, it would again
shine out, marking the calm sea with a tall pillar of light.

"Come down, Mr. O'Malley," cried the skipper's well-known voice,--"come
down below and join us in a parting glass; that's the Lisbon light to
leeward, and before two hours we drop our anchor in the Tagus."

CHAPTER XXXV.

MAJOR MONSOON.

Of my travelling companions I have already told my readers something. Power
is now an old acquaintance; to Sparks I have already presented them; of the
adjutant they are not entirely ignorant; and it therefore only remains for
me to introduce to their notice Major Monsoon. I should have some scruple
for the digression which this occasions in my narrative, were it not that
with the worthy major I was destined to meet subsequently; and indeed
served under his orders for some months in the Peninsula. When Major
Monsoon