"If the Bermudas let you pass,
You must beware of Hatteras - "
we were to the northward of Hatteras, with good weather, and beginning
to count, not the days, but the hours, to the time when we should be
at anchor in Boston harbor.
Our ship was in fine order, all hands having been hard at work
upon her from daylight to dark, every day but Sunday, from the
time we got into warm weather on this side the Cape.
It is a common notion with landsmen that a ship is in her finest
condition when she leaves port to enter upon her voyage; and that
she comes home, after a long absence,
"With over-weathered ribs and ragged sails;
Lean, rent and beggared by the strumpet wind."
But so far from that, unless a ship meets with some accident, or
comes upon the coast in the dead of winter, when work cannot be
done upon the rigging, she is in her finest order at the end of
the voyage.
