People have hardly time nowadays to speak even on the broad ocean, where news is news, and as for a salute of guns, they cannot afford the powder.
There are no poetry-enshrined freighters on the sea now; it is a prosy life when we have no time to bid one another good morning.
My ship, running now in the full swing of the trades, left me days to myself for rest and recuperation.

I employed the time in reading and writing, or in whatever I found to do about the rigging and the sails to keep them all in order.

The cooking was always done quickly, and was a small matter, as the bill of fare consisted mostly of flying-fish, hot biscuits and butter, potatoes, coffee and cream--dishes readily prepared.
On September 10 the _Spray_ passed the island of St.Antonio, the northwesternmost of the Cape Verdes, close aboard.

The landfall was wonderfully true, considering that no observations for longitude had been made.

The wind, northeast, as the sloop drew by the island, was very squally, but I reefed her sails snug, and steered broad from the highland of blustering St.Antonio.Then leaving the Cape Verde Islands out of sight astern, I found myself once more sailing a lonely sea and in a solitude supreme all around.