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27th.—Our course regained, the "Essex" sailed quietly on.
28th.—At sunrise I was summoned in haste to the poop, to see a remarkable effect in the sky. Just above the spot where the sun was struggling to appear from behind a bank of reddish grey clouds, there was thrown across the bright blue sky a long white cloud, exactly in shape and twist like an Archimedes screw; I added it, with the sunset of the night before the gale, to my collection of "Sketches at Sea." Should I ever live to be old—or rather, older, how pleasantly these sketches will recall the memory of the past!
