Page:The American fugitive in Europe.djvu/272

264 sky was cloudless, and the clear, bracing air had a buoyancy I have seldom seen. The moon was in its zenith; the steamer and surrounding objects were beautiful in the extreme. The boat left her moorings at half-past twelve, and we were soon out at sea. The "Queen" is a splendid craft, and, without the aid of sails, was able to make fifteen miles within the hour. I was up the next morning extremely early,—indeed, before any of my fellow-passengers,—and found the sea, as on the previous night, as calm and as smooth as a mirror.

"There was no sound upon the deep,

The breeze lay cradled there;

The motionless waters sank to sleep

Beneath the sultry air;

Out of the cooling brine to leap

The dolphin scarce would dare."

It was a delightful morning, more like April than February; and the sun, as it rose, seemed to fire every peak of the surrounding hills. On our left lay the Island of May, while to the right was to be seen the small fishing-town of Anstruther, twenty miles distant from Edinburgh. Beyond these, on either side, was a range of undulating blue mountains, swelling, as they retired, into a bolder outline and a loftier altitude, until they terminated an me twenty-five or thirty miles in the dim distance. A friend at my side pointed out a place on the right, where the remains of an old castle or look-out house, used in the time of the border wars, once