Neither did they expect to know what was passing at home till they should touch at St.Helena, on the return voyage, in the latter end of the following year.
I remember looking over the lee-gangway next day, at the first blush of the dawn, during the morning watch, and I could barely distinguish the fleet far to leeward, with their royals just showing above the horizon.

On taking leave of our convoy, we were reminded that there is always something about the last, the very last look of any object, which brings with it a feeling of melancholy.

On this occasion, however, we had nothing more serious to reproach ourselves with than sundry impatient execrations with which we had honoured some of our slow-moving, heavy-sterned friends, when we were compelled to shorten sail in a fair wind, in order to keep them company.

A smart frigate making a voyage with a dull-sailing convoy reminds one of the child's story of the provoking journey made by the hare with a drove of oxen.
Our merry attendants, the flying-fish, and others which swarmed about us in the torrid zone, refused to see us across the tropic, and the only aquatics we fell in with afterwards were clumsy whales and grampuses, and occasionally a shoal of white porpoises.

Of birds there were plenty, especially albatrosses.