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.".