Page:The City of the Saints.djvu/520

502 the line, made the evening highly agreeable with conversation aided by "Italia," a certain muscatel cognac that has yet to reach Great Britain. We steamed the next morning, under charge of Captain Leeds, over the Caribbean Sea or Spanish Main, bound for St. Thomas. A hard-hearted E.N.E. wind protracted the voyage of the Solent for six days, and we reached the Danish settlement in time, and only just in time, to save a week's delay upon that offensive scrap of negro liberty-land. On the 9th of December we bade adieu with pleasure to the little dungeon-rock, and turned the head of the good ship Seine, Captain Rivett, toward the Western Islands. She played a pretty wheel till almost within sight of Land's End, where Britannia received us with her characteristic welcome, a gale and a pea-soup fog, which kept us cruising about for three days in the unpleasant Solent and the Southampton Water.