Friday, July 14th.—­We still have a light wind, right aft, accompanied by a heavy roll from the westward, which makes it impossible to sit anywhere with comfort, and difficult even to read.  By 6 a.m. the sun had become very powerful, though its heat was tempered by the breeze, which gradually increased throughout the day, until, having set all our fore-and-aft canvas, as well as our square sails, we glided steadily along, in delightful contrast to the uneasy motion of the morning, and of the past few days.  Under the awning—­with the most heavenly blue sky above, and the still darker clear blue sea beneath, stretching away in gentle ripples as far as the eye could reach—­it was simply perfect.

Our little party get on extremely well together, though a week ago they were strangers to each other.  We are all so busy that we do not see much of one another except at meals, and then we have plenty to talk about.  Captain Lecky imparts to us some of his valuable information about scientific navigation and the law of storms, and he and Tom and Captain Brown work hard at these subjects.  Mr. Freer follows in the same path; Mr. Bingham draws and reads; Dr. Potter helps me to teach the children, who, I am happy to say, are as well as possible.  I read and write a great deal, and learn Spanish, so that the days are all too short for what we have to do.  The servants are settling down well into their places, and the commissariat department does great credit to the cooks and stewards.  The maids get on satisfactorily, but are a little nervous on rough nights.  We hope not to have many more just at present, for we are now approaching calmer latitudes.

In the course of the day, whilst Tom and I were sitting in the stern, the man at the wheel suddenly exclaimed, ’There’s land on the port bow.’  We knew, from the distance we had run, that this could not be the case, and after looking at it through the glasses, Tom pronounced the supposed land to be a thick wall of fog, advancing towards us against the wind.  Captain Brown and Captain Lecky came from below, and hastened to get in the studding-sails, in anticipation of the coming squall.  In a few minutes we had lost our fair breeze and brilliant sunshine, all our sails were taken flat aback, and we found ourselves enveloped in a dense fog, which made it impossible for us to see the length of the vessel.  It was an extraordinary phenomenon.  Captain Lecky, who, in the course of his many voyages, has passed within a few miles of this exact spot more than a hundred and fifty times, had never seen anything in the least like it.  As night came on the fog increased, and the boats were prepared ready for lowering.  Two men went to the wheel, and two to the bows to look out, while an officer was stationed on the bridge with steam-whistle and bell ready for an emergency; so that, in case we ran into anything, or anything ran into us, we should at least have the satisfaction of knowing that, so far as we were concerned, it had all been done strictly according to Act of Parliament.