Of course, this annunciation created quite a sensation, for a moment, aboard the frigate. The Boston gone, which .we had been expecting daily to join the squadron. "What of the crew of the Boston; were there any lives lost?" was the next inquiry from our ship. "No-none,' was the welcome reply, to the relief of some, and to the gratification of all. "The United States ship Albany left Havana a few days ago for Pensacola," continued the merchantman. We were glad to hear it; and now asked if there were any reports of Mexican privateers, in Havana. "There were reports, but not confirmed," was the reply. "Have you the President's Message ?" now went on the air as our last hail to the merchantman, who replied, "We have not ;" when we added, for the news he had communicated, "Thank you, sir-thank you ;" and might have added, "Good night to you-we wish you a safe and prosperous passage," as our own ship, though one of her topsails was aback, and her courses up, glided ahead of the merchantman, who, ere long, was shut in by the shades of the night from our further view, as we left him in the distance under our stern. The locality of the wreck of the Boston, at Harbor Island, south of the " Hole-in-the-wall passage," reminds me of a story Captain Gregory tells of his visit, in the Grampus, once to that island, where he met a number of old people, who exhibited a remarkable degree of simplicity and exclusiveness of all association with the world beside. One of these old ones was telling him of some event which occurred at a period which the narrator, for the life of him, could not precisely fix; but, said he, "It was, any how, just the year before or just the year after the lucky year.” "The lucky year," said Captain G., "what do you mean by the lucky year?" "Well, now, Captain, you don't say you never heard of the lucky year, do you?" Upon my honor," returned the Captain, "I never did -what was the lucky year?" "Why, it was in all the gazettes, Captain, and always since is known as the lucky year-for that was the year when seven good wrecks came ashore on the island all in one night," said the wrecker, with a conclusiveness as to the correctness of his estimate of good luck, which no living wrecker would gainsay. Our own frigate has stood on leisurely through this narrowest passage of the Gulf, under easy sail. With the knowledge that fish are usually taken in the passage through the Florida Keys, an occasional line, during the day, has been discovered to be straying overboard: A horse-mackerel with its striped back was cheated, by the rapid passage through the water of a white rag affixed to a fish-hook, as our ship bounded on her course; and, of a sudden, he found himself among strange company, and, to his breathless astonishment, was in scarcely no time aboard the United States ship Cumberland, then passing through these seas, through which he had heretofore gambolled and eaten many a lesser fish than himself, without ever before having been called to an account for indulging in so unnatural an appetite as that of eating his fellow species. And now he found himself about to be eaten in his turn by bigger fish than he, as, sure enough, he was presented, in his full proportions, in due time after his capture, before his claimants of the ward-room, who, without a conscience or one twang of pity for his destined end, and at the appointed hour of two o'clock, devoured him. THE DOLPHIN. But another sight more beautiful than the catching of the horse-mackerel was seen, while the ship still held on her fleet way, as one of the quarter-masters in the chains pulled in a beautiful dolphin, that most graceful thing of the seas. The line was long; and the beautifully colored fish, as he sheered through the blue water, cut his way like a dancing rainbow, beneath the surface of the deep, though occasionally nearing the top of the blue waters, and leaping above the mimic surge, when again he fell into his native element, and again, like a streak of colored light, shot on his brilliant passage beneath the surface, like a meteor of the heavens gleaming through its own upper deep of blue ether. Pity that so graceful a thing of nature was born ever to die. But preliminary to the fate, from which his graceful form and gorgeous dyes could not save him, he was soon hauled into the mizzen chains and passed through one of the ports; when, by special favor, to give me the pleasure and the pain of seeing the beautiful dolphin die, he was placed on the quarter-deck, where the sun's full beams should fall upon him, to light up in their glory the changing dyes, as they brightened and faded, and faded and brightened again, as the beautiful fish gasped, and yet more faintly gasped, and finally gasped no more. I had before seen the dolphin caught -marked his graceful proportions and brilliant dyes, changing as he died. But not as now had I so minutely watched the lovely thing through all its changes to its last gasp, and latest quiver, and final shade, that rested among its settled colors. The eye was large the pupil expanded-and changed from the hazel to the pearl; and then again, from the pearly brightness back to the soft and mellowed hazel. The golden hues of his sides became yet more golden, of vel vet softness and loveliness-and then changed to the deepest blue, which faded away from the indigo to the palest sky, and ending with the pearly white with flashes of the pink; and back again to the richest gold; when a play of colors, in lines and scintillations, alternated over the quivering beauty, blending many different colors-the gold and purple and pearly hues prevailing, until the last quiver told that there was agony no longer in the last struggle, for him. The graceful dolphin now lay in his still beautiful but changeless colorings, in which the greenish gold, and lightest blue, and bluish pearl prevailed. It is sad, ever, to look on fading beauty. But I have seen beauty in the death-calm sleep of some who were to wake no more. And while I would avoid the burlesque by any comparison between the cessation of life in an irrational and a rational being, I yet believe that there were others standing about this dying creature, who, besides myself, however little they may have analyzed their feelings, yet felt an emotion of sorrow, that this beautiful thing should die, because it was so beautiful. SEA-SERPENT. We had been, for some time, standing along parallel with the reef of rocks called the "Double-headed Shot-keys" from some fancied resemblance to a string of these two-headed shot, being placed in an extending line together. As I came on deck after breakfast, the sun shining brightly, and the wind blowing refreshingly, and the ship sailing beautifully, this long reef presented an interesting and peculiar appear ance. 66 "Why, my friends," I exclaimed to the gentlemen on the poop-deck, "you mistake-that is the SEA-SERPENT, standing southerly." And had the sea-serpent existed, when the appellation was given to this peculiar reef, it had most certainly gained a still more characteristic name-for there were the one hundred and more bumps, like so many puncheons and lesser casks strung together, and resembling the shape into which the sea-serpent is known to throw himself when he discovers himself to the Northern mariners off Montauk, Nahant and other points, and with lesser bumps terminating his head and tail, which the imagination, with half the assistance which the frightened seamen indulge when they have seen this mon. ster of the deep, would enable one to conjure up to be the identical head and tail, with the central bumps, of that fa mous rover of the deep. But I found it difficult to persuade the gentlemen, that the bumpy object in the distance was the identical rambler of the seas, about whom so many stories have been told and affidavits made. And one of the principal arguments, convincing to myself, that there might be an error about the identical sea-serpent being before us, was the fact that he seemed to preserve an obstinate state of rest. And besides, we had been expecting to find some queer-shaped land in about the same place where the sea-monster seemed now to be lying, as the sea surges rolled undisturbingly by him. And still further a light-house, it was affirmed, would be discovered, situated just about in this direction, and having an appearance not very dissimilar from something now discovered on the tail of this sea-monster, though the charts and books locate the light-house on a reef of coral rocks and land, resembling somewhat in its profile delineations this famous sea-serpent, now basking there in the sunshine of these cur. rent-setting seas. rest. We left the bumpy monster still in his And if succeeding mariners shall find him still reposing there in his present latitude and longitude; and more than all, if on some dark and tempestuous night he shall give light to the adventurous seaman, to warn him from the reef, in these often boisterous and almost always dangerous seas, we will give up our imaginings of him as of the real sea-serpent, and bid the voyager good speed over the dark |