Page:Extracts from the letters and journals of George Fletcher Moore.djvu/31

 Rh captain, passengers, and crew, with the exception of two or three, attending in the large cabin—a gratifying and impressive scene. No vessel, no living thing in sight, except a solitary bird, one of Mother Carey's chickens. Ship going at the rate of nine knots, and rolling more than is quite comfortable. Peak of Teneriffe not yet visible. Saw flying fish for the first time. They seemed to spring up from the side of the vessel as if startled, sometimes taking a considerable flight, at other times just touching the waters and then rising again. Occasionally a single one rises, at other times twenty or thirty spring up together. I could not perceive any vibrations in their fins or wings, whichever naturalists please to call them. Most of them are of a silver grey; a few of yellow or gold colour. We are supposed to be now about the tropic. Thermometer 80°. Water miserably bad; even filtering fails to improve it, as one of our passengers, who happens to have a good filtering machine, assures me. The only way to swallow it without disgust is in negus, with plenty of lemon juice.

Saw a pilot fish, which is about the size of a mackerel, with stripes on his side like those of a zebra. I am told that he generally accompanies the shark; the latter, however, did not appear, but towards evening a large shoal of porpoises surrounded the vessel, apparently