been in this bay before, or never so near its head, her officers found some temporary relief from the very general uneasiness that was felt on account of their prisoner, in viewing scenery that is remarkable even in that remarkable section of the globe.  The ship had gone up abreast of Amalfi, and so close in as to be less than a mile from the shore.  This object was to communicate with some fishermen, which had been done; the information received going to establish the fact, that no craft resembling the lugger had been in that part of the Bay.  The vessel’s head was now laid to the southward and westward, in waiting for the zephyr, which might soon be expected.  The gallant frigate, seen from the impending rocks, looked like a light merchantman, in all but her symmetry and warlike guise; nature being moulded on so grand a scale all along that coast, as to render objects of human art unusually diminutive to the eye.  On the other hand, the country-houses, churches, hermitages, convents, and villages, clustered all along the mountain-sides, presented equally delusive forms, though they gave an affluence to the views that left the spectator in a strange doubt which most to admire, their wildness or their picturesque beauty.  The little air that remained was still at the southward, and as the ship moved slowly along this scene of singular attraction, each ravine seemed to give up a town, each shelf of rock a human habitation, and each natural terrace a villa and a garden.

Of all men, sailors get to be the most blases in the way of the sensations produced by novelties and fine scenery.  It appears to be a part of their calling to suppress the emotions of a greenhorn; and, generally, they look upon anything that is a little out of the ordinary track with the coolness of those who feel it is an admission of inferiority to betray surprise.  It seldom happens with them that anything occurs, or anything is seen, to which the last cruise, or, if the vessel be engaged in trade, the last voyage, did not at least furnish a parallel; usually the past event, or the more distant object, has the advantage.  He who has a sufficient store of this reserved knowledge and experience, it will at once be seen, enjoys a great superiority over him who has not, and is placed above the necessity of avowing a sensation as humiliating as wonder.  On the present occasion, however, bur few held out against the novelty of the actual situation of the ship; most on board being willing enough to allow that they had never before been beneath cliffs that had such a union of the magnificent, the picturesque, and the soft; though a few continued firm, acting up to the old characters with the consistency of settled obstinacy.

Strand, the boatswain, was one of those who, on all such occasions, “died hard.”  He was the last man in the ship who ever gave up a prejudice; and this for three several reasons:  he was a cockney, and believed himself born in the centre of human knowledge; he was a seaman, and understood the world; he was a boatswain, and stood upon his dignity.