ave been told that, however
weakly otherwise, the calf muscles of watch-officers were generally
well developed. There were exceptions. A lieutenant who was something
of a wag on one occasion handed the midshipman of his watch a small
instrument, in which the latter did not recognize a pedometer. "Will
you kindly keep this in your trousers-pocket for me till the watch is
over?" At eight bells he asked for it, and, after examining, said,
quizzically, "Mr. ----, I see you have walked just half a mile in the
last four hours." Of course, walking is not imperative, one may watch
standing; but movement tends to wakefulness--you can drowse upon your
feet--while to sit down, besides being forbidden by unwritten law, is
a treacherous snare to young eyelids.

How much a watch afforded to an eye that loved nature! I have been
bored so often by descriptions of scenery, that I am warned to put
here a sharp check on my memory, lest it run away with me, and my
readers seek escape by jumping off. I will forbear, therefore, any
attempt at portraiture, and merely mention the superb aurora borealis
which illuminated several nights of the autumn of 1859, perceptibly
affecting the brightness of the atmosphere, while we lay becalmed a
little north of the tropics. But other things I shall have some excuse
for telling; because what my eyes used to see then few mortal eyes
will see again. Travel will not reach it; for though here and there a
rare sailing-ship is kept in a navy, for occasional instruction,
otherwise they have passed away forever; and the exceptions are but
curiosities--reality has disappeared. They no longer have life, and
are now but the specimens of the museum. The beauties of a brilliant
night at sea, whether starlit or moonlit, the solemn, awe-inspiring
gloom and silence of a clouded, threatening sky, as the steamer with
dull thud moves at midnight over the waste of waters, these I need not
describe; many there are that see them in these rambling days. These
eternities of the heavens and the deep abide as before, are common to
the steamer as to the sailing-ship; but what weary strain of words can
restore to imagination the beautiful living creature which leaped
under our feet and spread her wings above us? For a sailing-ship was
more inspiring from within than from without, especially a ship of
war, which, as usually ordered, permitted no slovenliness; abounded in
the perpetual seemliness that enhances beauty yet takes naught