Weather cloudy and gloomy-looking, and the wind moaning and whistling through the rigging--enough to give one the blues.

These are some of the comforts of sea-going, and we have had our share of them in the Alabama.
_Thursday, December 18th._--The gale continues, with dense clouds in every direction obscuring the heavens so that we get no meridian altitude.

I got a glimpse of the sun at about nine minutes past noon.

When one's ship is in a doubtful position, how eagerly and nervously one watches the shifting clouds near noon, and how remorsely they sometimes close up their dense masses just at the critical moment, shutting out from us the narrowly-watched face of the sun! One is foolish enough sometimes almost to feel a momentary resentment against inanimate nature--weak mortals that we are! The gale has drifted us so far to leeward that the wind from its present quarter will no longer permit us to "lay through" the Yucatan passage, so at 2 P.M.we tacked to the southward and eastward.

Weather still thick in the afternoon, with light rain at intervals.