We lay becalmed opposite Sheerness the whole of the second day.  At dusk a sudden squall came up, which drove us foaming towards the North Foreland.  When I went on deck in the morning, we had passed Dover and Brighton, and the Isle of Wight was rising dim ahead of us.  The low English coast on our right was bordered by long reaches of dazzling chalky sand, which glittered along the calm blue water.

Gliding into the Bay of Portsmouth, we dropped anchor opposite the romantic town of Ryde, built on the sloping shore of the green Isle of Wight.  Eight or nine vessels of the Experimental Squadron were anchored near us, and over the houses of Portsmouth, I saw the masts of the Victory—­the flag-ship in the battle of Trafalgar, on board of which Nelson was killed.  The wind was not strong enough to permit the passage of the Needles, so at midnight we succeeded in wearing back again into the channel, around the Isle of Wight.  A head wind forced us to tack away towards the shore of France.  We were twice in sight of the rocky coast of Brittany, near Cherbourg, but the misty promontory of Land’s End was our last glimpse of the old world.

On one of our first days at sea, I caught a curlew, which came flying on weary wings towards us, and alighted on one of the boats.  Two of his brethren, too much exhausted or too timid to do likewise, dropped flat on the waves and resigned themselves to their fate without a struggle.  I slipped up and caught his long, lank legs, while he was resting with flagging wings and half-shut eyes.  We fed him, though it was difficult to get anything down his reed-shaped bill; but he took kindly to our force-work, and when we let him loose on the deck, walked about with an air quite tame and familiar.  He died, however, two days afterwards.  A French pigeon, which was caught in the rigging, lived and throve during the whole of the passage.

A few days afterwards, a heavy storm came on, and we were all sleepless and sea-sick, as long as it lasted.  Thanks, however, to a beautiful law of memory, the recollection of that dismal period soon lost its unpleasantness, while the grand forms of beauty the vexed ocean presented, will remain forever, as distinct and abiding images.  I kept on deck as long as I could stand, watching the giant waves over which our vessel took her course.  They rolled up towards us, thirty or forty feet in height—­dark gray masses, changing to a beautiful vitriol tint, wherever the light struck through their countless and changing crests.  It was a glorious thing to see our good ship mount slowly up the side of one of these watery lulls, till her prow was lifted high in air, then, rocking over its brow, plunge with a slight quiver downward, and plough up a briny cataract, as she struck the vale.  I never before realized the terrible sublimity of the sea.  And yet it was a pride to see how man—­strong in his godlike will—­could bid defiance to those whelming surges, and bravo their wrath unharmed.