Page:The Rambler in Mexico.djvu/231

Rh The "Mexican," for so our packet was called, was a fine new vessel, clean and well-ordered, a fast sailer, and altogether the most comfortable ship I ever was in. We had our staterooms on deck in a kind of open roundhouse.

The voyage was, upon the whole, prosperous; and for many days it seemed as if it would have been made in an unusually brief space of time—such was the rapid advance made under the influence of a steady breeze, and the rapidity of the great gulf stream, whose current was in our favour. In one forty-eight hours, we logged an advance of full five hundred miles. However, three days' storm in the latitude of Cape Hatteras, delayed us considerably; and it was on May 9th before we crossed the bar at Sandy Hook, and entered the port of New-York.

There was one occurrence on board, however, which made a great impression upon the ship's company at the time, and with the mention of that I terminate my chronicle. Among the Europeans who had come down from the capital with the other passengers for the packet, was Mr. P., a young French gentleman of family, an attache of the French legation. He had spent two years in the country, and was now returning to New-York and Paris with despatches, to the joy of his parents, to whom, as we learned afterward, this long separation had been a grievous trial.

Gay and careless, on arrival at Jalapa, far from following the advice or example of every other individual of the party similarly circumstanced, he persisted in continuing his journey to Vera Cruz without delay, laughing at the idea of the danger—preferring to pass jovially a day or two with his acquaintances in that city, to the detention in a town on the mountains, where he felt no particular interest. He went—and on the evening of sailing, he joined us on board, dilating upon the social hours he had passed in consequence of his better management.

Poor fellow!—little did he imagine, that that heedless