east wind, as straight as a bee-line. On the third day we ran two
hundred and fifty-four miles; on the fourth two hundred and sixty;
and on the next day, at noon, where should we be? Nearing the
Azores; and by midnight, running past them, and away on the track of
Columbus, towards the Sargasso Sea.

We stayed up late on the night of December 7, in hopes of seeing, as
we passed Terceira, even the loom of the land: but the moon was
down; and a glimpse of the 'Pico' at dawn next morning was our only
chance of seeing, at least for this voyage, those wondrous Isles of
the Blest--Isles of the Blest of old; and why not still? They too
are said to be earthly paradises in soil, climate, productions; and
yet no English care to settle there, nor even to go thither for
health, though the voyage from Lisbon is but a short one, and our
own mail steamers, were it made worth their while, could as easily
touch at Terceira now as they did a few years since.

And as we looked out into the darkness, we could not but recollect,
with a flush of pride, that yonder on the starboard beam lay Flores,
and the scene of that great fight off the Azores, on August 30,
1591, made ever memorable by the pen of Walter Raleigh--and of late
by Mr. Froude; in which the Revenge, with Sir Richard Grenville for
her captain, endured for twelve hours, before she struck, the attack
of eight great Spanish armadas, of which two (three times her own
burden) sank at her side; and after all her masts were gone, and she
had been three times boarded without success, defied to the last the
whole fleet of fifty-one sail, which lay around her, waiting, 'like
dogs around the dying forest-king,' for the Englishman to strike or
sink. Yonder away it was, that, wounded again and again, and shot
through body and through head, Sir Richard Grenville was taken on