Land--Abaco--Fleet--Hole in the Wall--A wrecker's hut--
Bahama vampyres--Light houses--Conspiracy--Wall of Abaco--
Natural Bridge--Cause--Night scene--Speak a packet ship--A
floating city--Wrecker's lugger--Signal of distress--A
Yankee lumber brig--Portuguese Man-of-War.
"Land ho!" shouted a voice both loud and long, apparently from the
clouds, just as we had comfortably laid ourselves out yesterday
afternoon for our customary _siesta_.
"Where away?" shouted the captain, springing to the deck, but not so
fast as to prevent our tumbling over him, in the head-and-heels
projection of our bodies up the companion-way, in our eagerness to catch
a glimpse, once more, of the grassy earth; of something at least
stationary.
"Three points off the weather bow," replied the man aloft.
"Where is it?"--"which way?" "I see it"--"Is that it captain--the little
hump?" were the eager exclamations and inquiries of the enraptured
passengers, who, half beside themselves, were peering, straining, and
querying, to little purpose.
It was Abaco--the land first made by vessels bound to New Orleans or
Cuba, from the north. With the naked eye, we could scarcely distinguish
it from the small blue clouds, which, resting, apparently, on the sea,
floated near the verge of the southern horizon. But with the spy glass,
we could discern it more distinctly, and less obscured by that vail of
blue haze, which always envelopes distant objects when seen from a great
distance at sea, or on land.
As we approached, its azure vail gradually faded away, and it appeared
to our eyes in its autumnal gray coat, with all its irregularities of
surface and outline clearly visible.
Slightly altering our course, in order to weather its southern
extremity, we ran down nearly parallel with the shores of the island
that rose apparently from the sea, as we neared it, stretching out upon
the water like a huge alligator, which it resembled in shape. Sail after
sail hove in sight as we coasted pleasantly along with a fine breeze,
till, an hour before the sun went down, a large wide-spreading fleet
could be discerned from the deck, lying becalmed, near the extreme
southern point of Abaco, which, stretching out far into the sea, like a
wall perforated with an arched gateway near the centre, is better known
by the familiar appellation of "The Hole in the Wall."
"There is a habitation of some sort," exclaimed one of the passengers,
whose glass had long been hovering over the island.
"Where--where?" was the general cry, and closer inspection from a dozen
eyes, detected a miserable hut, half hidden among the bushes, and so
wild and wretched in appearance, that we unanimously refused it the
honor of
"----A local habitation and a name!"
It was nevertheless the first dwelling of man we had seen for many a
day; and notwithstanding our vote of non-acceptance, it was not devoid
of interest in our eyes. It was evidently the abode of some one of those
demi sea-monsters, called "Wreckers," who, more destructive than the
waves, prey upon the ship-wrecked mariner. The Bahamas swarm with these
wreckers who, in small lugger-sloops, continually prowl about among the
islands,
"When the demons of the tempest rave,"
like birds of ill omen, ready to seize upon the storm-tossed vessel,
should it be driven among the rocks or shoals with which this region
abounds. At midnight, when the lightning for a moment illumines the sky
and ocean, the white sail of the wrecker's little bark, tossing amid the
storm upon the foaming billows, will flash upon the eyes of the toiling
seamen as they labour to preserve their vessel, striking their souls
with dread and awakening their easily excited feelings of superstition.
Like evil spirits awaiting at the bed-side the release of an unannealed
soul, they hover around the struggling ship through the night, and,
flitting away at the break of morning, may be discovered in the
subsiding of the tempest, just disappearing under the horizon with a
sailor's hearty blessing sent after them.
That light-houses have not been erected on the dangerous head-lands and
reefs which line the Bahama channel, is a strange oversight or neglect
on the part of the governments of the United States and England, which
of all maritime nations are most immediately concerned in the object.
Suitable light-houses on the most dangerous points, would annually save,
from otherwise inevitable destruction, many vessels and preserve
hundreds of valuable lives. The profession of these marauders would be,
in such a case, but a sinecure; provided they would allow the lights to
remain. But, unless each tower were converted into a well-manned
gun-battery the piratical character of these men will preclude any hope
of their permanent establishment. Men of their buccaneering habits are
not likely to lie quietly on their oars, and see their means of
livelihood torn from them by the secure navigation of these waters. They
will sound, from island to island, the tocsin for the gathering of their
strength, and concentrate for the destruction of these enemies to their
_honest calling_, before they have cast their cheering beams over these
stormy seas a score of nights.
As we approached the Hole in the Wall, the breeze which we had brought
down the channel, stole in advance and set in motion the fleet of
becalmed vessels, which rolled heavily on the long, ground-swell, about
a league ahead of us. The spur or promontory of Abaco, around which we
were sailing, is a high, wall-like ridge of rock, whose surface
gradually inclines from the main body of the island to its abrupt
termination about a quarter of a league into the sea. As we sailed along
its eastern side we could not detect the opening from which it derives
its name. The eye met only a long black wall of rock, whose rugged
projections were hung with festoons of dark purple sea-weed, and around
whose base the waters surged, with a roar heard distinctly by us, three
miles from the island.
On rounding the extremity of the head-land, and bearing up a point or
two, the arch in the Cape gradually opened till it became wholly
visible, apparently about half the altitude of, and very similar in
appearance to the Natural bridge in Virginia. The chasm is irregularly
arched, and broader at thirty feet from the sea than at its base. The
water is of sufficient depth, and the arch lofty enough, to allow small
fishing vessels to pass through the aperture, which is about one hundred
feet in length through the solid rock. There is a gap which would
indicate the former existence of a similar cavity, near the end of this
head-land. A large, isolated mass of rock is here detached from the main
wall, at its termination in the sea, which was undoubtedly, at some
former period, joined to it by a natural arch, now fallen into the
water, as, probably, will happen to this within a century.
These cavities are caused by the undermining of the sea, which, dashing
unceasingly against the foundations of the wall, shatters and crumbles
it by its constant abrasion, opens through it immense fissures, and
loosens large fragments of the rock, that easily yield and give way to
its increased violence; while the upper stratum, high beyond the reach
of the surge, remains firm, and, long after the base has crumbled into
the sea, arches over like a bridge the chasm beneath. By and by this
falls by its own weight, and is buried beneath the waves.
As the shades of night fell over the sea, and veiled the land from our
eyes, we had a fresh object of excitement in giving chase to the vessels
which, as the sun went down among them, were scattered thickly along the
western horizon far ahead of us--ships, brigs, and schooners, stretching
away under all sail before the evening breeze to the south and west. We
had lost sight of them after night had set in, but at about half past
eight in the evening, as we all were peering through the darkness, upon
the _qui vive_ for the strangers, a bright light flashed upon our eyes
over the water, and at the same moment the lookout forward electrified
us with the cry----
"A ship dead ahead, sir!"
The captain seized his speaking-trumpet, and sprang to the bows; but we
were there before him, and discovered a solitary light burning at the
base of a dark pyramid, which towered gloomily in the obscurity of the
night. The outline of the object was so confused and blended with the
sky, that we could discern it but indistinctly. To our optics it
appeared, as it loomed up in the night-haze, to be a ship of the largest
class. The spy glass was in immediate requisition, but soon laid aside
again.
Let me inform you that "DAY and NIGHT" marked upon the
tube of a spy-glass, signifies that it may be used in the day, and kept
in the beckets at night.
We had been gathered upon the bowsprit and forecastle but a few seconds,
watching in silence the dark moving tower on the water before us, as we
approached it rapidly, when we were startled by the sudden hail of the
stranger, who was now hauling up on our weather bow--
"Ship-ahoy!" burst loudly over the water from the hoarse throat of a
trumpet.
"Ahoy!" bellowed our captain, so gently back again through the ship's
trumpet, that the best "bull of Bashan" might have envied him his roar.
"What ship's that?"
"The Plato of Portland," with a second bellow which was a very manifest
improvement upon the preceding.
"Where bound?"
"New-Orleans!"