each side of him, from the main topgallant yard. Land continued in
sight till sunset, but since then it has disappeared. To-day (Sunday)
we are speeding up the coast; the anchors are ready, and to-morrow by
early daylight we trust to drop them in the harbour of Lyttelton. We
have reason, from certain newspapers, to believe that the mails leave on
the 23rd of the month, in which case I shall have no time or means to
add a single syllable.

January 26.--Alas for the vanity of human speculation! After writing
the last paragraph the wind fell light, then sprung up foul, and so we
were slowly driven to the E.N.E. On Monday night it blew hard, and we
had close-reefed topsails. Tuesday morning at five it was lovely, and
the reefs were all shaken out; a light air sprang up, and the ship, at
10 o'clock, had come up to her course, when suddenly, without the
smallest warning, a gale came down upon us from the S.W. like a wall.
The men were luckily very smart in taking in canvas, but at one time the
captain thought he should have had to cut away the mizzenmast. We were
reduced literally to bare poles, and lay-to under a piece of tarpaulin,
six times doubled, and about two yards square, fastened up in the mizzen
rigging. All day and night we lay thus, drifting to leeward at three
knots an hour. In the twenty-four hours we had drifted sixty miles.
Next day the wind moderated; but at 12 we found that we were eighty
miles north of the peninsula and some 3 degrees east of it. So we set a
little sail, and commenced forereaching slowly on our course. Little
and little the wind died, and it soon fell dead calm. That evening
(Wednesday), some twenty albatrosses being congregated like a flock of
geese round the ship's stern, we succeeded in catching some of them, the
first we had caught on the voyage. We would have let them go again, but
the sailors think them good eating, and begged them of us, at the same
time prophesying two days' foul wind for every albatross taken. It was