As we had only to deliver the letter-bag, our stay on shore did not occupy many minutes: before we had breakfasted, Barbadoes was far behind and sinking in the horizon, and the heat of the day was excessive; not a flake of cloud stained the azure of the skies, and the universal ocean, like molten sapphire, as it brilliantly sparkled before the favouring breeze, appeared as if sprinkled with strings of the purest pearls. I had no idea that there could have been such a difference in beauty between the West-Indian waters and the sunniest of our British seas.

Towards noon the breeze, which had increased from the morning, began to slacken, much to the surprise of the captain, and different from the regularity which we had experienced from the day we entered the current of the trade-wind. I should not, perhaps, have remarked this phenomenon, which is not common, but my attention was drawn to it, and to another circumstance still rarer. The atmosphere, which had all the morning been surprisingly clear, lending additional brightness to the intolerable splendour of the sun, gradually became less transparent, as if a white smoke were insensibly diffused throughout. At last the breeze died away, the sea grew as still as silver, and the air so dim that the bowsprit was hardly visible from the quarter-deck.