At night when the sun went down, the sheets were slackened; in the morning, when they yielded up the damp of the dew and relaxed, they were pulled tight again--and that was all.
Ten knots, twelve knots, eleven knots, varying from time to time, is the speed we are making.

And ever out of the north-east the brave wind blows, driving us on our course two hundred and fifty miles between the dawns.

It saddens me and gladdens me, the gait with which we are leaving San Francisco behind and with which we are foaming down upon the tropics.
Each day grows perceptibly warmer.

In the second dog-watch the sailors come on deck, stripped, and heave buckets of water upon one another from overside.

Flying-fish are beginning to be seen, and during the night the watch above scrambles over the deck in pursuit of those that fall aboard.
In the morning, Thomas Mugridge being duly bribed, the galley is pleasantly areek with the odour of their frying; while dolphin meat is served fore and aft on such occasions as Johnson catches the blazing beauties from the bowsprit end.
Johnson seems to spend all his spare time there or aloft at the crosstrees, watching the _Ghost_ cleaving the water under press of sail.
There is passion, adoration, in his eyes, and he goes about in a sort of trance, gazing in ecstasy at the swelling sails, the foaming wake, and the heave and the run of her over the liquid mountains that are moving with us in stately procession.
The days and nights are "all a wonder and a wild delight," and though I have little time from my dreary work, I steal odd moments to gaze and gaze at the unending glory of what I never dreamed the world possessed.
Above, the sky is stainless blue--blue as the sea itself, which under the forefoot is of the colour and sheen of azure satin.