We return to the transactions at Portsmouth.  To supply the place of the two hundred and forty invalids who had deserted, there were ordered on board two hundred and ten marines, drafted from different regiments.  These were raw and undisciplined men, just raised, and had scarcely any thing more of the soldier than their regimentals, none of them having been so far trained as to be permitted to fire.  The last of these detachments came on board on the 8th August, and on the 10th the squadron dropped down from Spithead to St Helen’s, there to wait for a wind to proceed on the expedition.  The delays we had already suffered had not yet spent all their influence; for we were now advanced to that season of the year when the westerly winds are usually very prevalent and violent; and it was thought proper that we should put to sea in company with the fleet commanded by Admiral Balchen, and the expedition under Lord Cathcart.  As we now made up in all twenty-one sail of men-of-war, and one hundred and twenty-four sail of merchant ships and transports, we had no hopes of getting out of the channel with so large a fleet, without the continuance of a fair wind for a considerable time, and this was what we had every day less and less reason to expect, as the time of the equinox drew near; wherefore our golden dreams and ideal possession of the Peruvian treasures grew every day more faint, and the difficulties and dangers of the passage round Cape Horn, in the winter season, filled our imaginations in their room.  It was forty days from our arrival at St Helens to our final departure from that place; and even then, having orders to proceed without Lord Cathcart, we tided down the channel with a contrary wind.  But this interval of forty days was not free from the displeasing fatigue of often setting sail, and being as often obliged to return, nor exempt from dangers greater than have been sometimes undergone in surrounding the globe.  For the wind coming fair for the first time on the 23d August, we got under sail, and Admiral Balchen shewed himself truly solicitous to have proceeded to sea; but the wind soon returned to its old quarter, and obliged us to put back to St Helens, not without considerable hazard, and some damage received by two of the transports, which ran foul of each other when tacking.  We made two or three other attempts to sail, but without any better success; and, on the 6th September, being returned to anchor at St Helens, after one of those fruitless attempts, the wind blew so fresh that the whole fleet had to strike yards and topmasts to prevent drifting:  Yet, notwithstanding this precaution, the Centurion drove next evening, and brought both cables a-head, when we were in no small danger of getting foul of the Prince Frederick, a seventy-gun ship, which was moored only a small distance under our stern, but we happily escaped, in consequence of her drifting at the same time, by which she preserved her distance, yet we did not think ourselves safe till we at last let go our sheet anchor, which fortunately brought us up.