With a fine southwest wind we passed inside of the Bermudas, and, notwithstanding the old couplet, which was quoted again and again by those who thought we should have one more touch of a storm before our long absence,—­

   ``If the Bermudas let you pass,
     You must beware of Hatteras,’’—­

we were to the northward of Hatteras, with good weather, and beginning to count, not the days, but the hours, to the time when we should be at anchor in Boston harbor.

Our ship was in fine order, all hands having been hard at work upon her, from daylight to dark, every day but Sunday from the time we got into warm weather on this side the Cape.

It is a common notion with landsmen that a ship is in her finest condition when she leaves port to enter upon her voyage, and that she comes home, after a long absence,—­

   ``With over-weathered ribs and ragged sails;
     Lean, rent, and beggared by the strumpet wind.’’

But so far from that, unless a ship meets with some accident, or comes upon the coast in the dead of winter, when work cannot be done upon the rigging, she is in her finest order at the end of the voyage.  When she sails from port, her rigging is generally slack; the masts need staying; the decks and sides are black and dirty from taking in cargo; riggers’ seizings and overhand knots in place of nice seamanlike work; and everything, to a sailor’s eye, adrift.  But on the passage home the fine weather between the tropics is spent in putting the ship in the neatest order.  No merchant vessel looks better than an Indiaman, or a Cape Horn-er, after a long voyage, and captains and mates stake their reputation for seamanship upon the appearance of their ships when they haul into the dock.  All our standing rigging, fore and aft, was set up and tarred, the masts stayed, the lower and topmast rigging rattled down (or up, as the fashion now is); and so careful were our officers to keep the ratlines taut and straight, that we were obliged to go aloft upon the ropes and shearpoles with which the rigging was swifted in; and these were used as jury ratlines until we got close upon the coast.  After this, the ship was scraped, inside and out, decks, masts, booms, and all; a stage being rigged outside, upon which we scraped her down to the water-line, pounding the rust off the chains, bolts, and fastenings.  Then, taking two days of calm under the line, we painted her on the outside, giving her open ports in her streak, and finishing off the nice work upon the stern, where sat Neptune in his car, holding his trident, drawn by sea horses; and retouched the gilding and coloring of the cornucopia which ornamented her billet-head.  The inside was then painted, from the skysail truck to the waterways,—­ the yards, black; mast-heads and tops, white; monkey-rail, black, white, and yellow; bulwarks, green; plank-shear, white; waterways, lead-color, &c., &c.  The anchors and ring-bolts, and other