two line-of-battle ships, one in each, in a violent storm; and they observed thai when each vessel was at the same time in the trough of the waves, they could neither of them see the other.Allowing that seventy feet is the height of the mainmast of such a ship, 55—60 feet must have been the elevation of the wave between them at the moment referred to.
These discussions,however, as to fact and fiction, served to pass away the time, though at the cost of the re- spective combatants, There was on board the vessel a party of Germans, another of Portuguese and of Spaniards, and a small oné of English, the steamers not being so full of passengers at that time of year. Each party exclusively kept to itself. We took on board two Spanish priests. The one locked sour, sallow, cun- ning and suspicious. He seemed evidently to have practiced seclusion, and perhaps maceration; with a good deal of the gloomy fur aégue sacerdos about him. The other was a perfect contrast—wrinkled and aged, but active and courteous in manner. He wore a small black net cap, instead of a hat, that was continually falling off, and was as often picked up by some one else, and blandly offered to him, at which he seemed highly pleased. There was also a portly Portuguese baroness, and her daughter, who looked more like her sister, and who gave herself great importance, which seemed granted to her by her countrymen. And last, not least, there was a tall mulatto female slave, dressed in white muslin, mixed with light grass-green, that “varie- gated,” as some one said, the group amazingly. In hot countnes the women are never skeletons. They are
