DISCOVER LAND.
The following are the names of those who escaped with me in the
longboat:
Marc Hislop, mate,
Thomas Lambourne, second mate,
Francis Probart, carpenter,
John Thomas Burnett, ship's cook,
Edward Carlton,
Henry Warren,
Hugh Chute,
Matthew Hipkin,
William Wilkins, usually called "Boy Bill."
As the morning light came in, there appeared to the south-westward a
vast bank of mist or cloud which shrouded half the sky, and assumed a
variety of beautiful tints when the rising sun shone on it--yellow
and saffron, deepening into purple and blue as its masses changed in
the contrary currents of air; while to the eastward, in the quarter
of the sun's ascension, the rippling ocean shone as if covered with
tremulous and glittering plates of mingled gold and green.
A ration of rum-and-water in equal proportions was now served round
to each man--the leathern cover of a bung being our only cup, as we
had omitted a drinking vessel among our hastily-collected stores.
Half of a biscuit given to each constituted our breakfast, and with
hope dawning with the day in our hearts, we shipped our oars and
pulled stoutly toward the west.
Tom Lambourne steered: the sea was smooth, the wind light, and in our
favor; so ere long the mast was shipped, and a sail hoisted to lessen
the labor of the rowers.
We were anxious for the dense bank of purple cloud to clear away,
that we might have a more extensive view of the horizon, and perhaps
discover a sail, but the envious vapor seemed to darken and to roll
before us, or rather before the wind that bore us after it.
About mid-day, when we were pausing on our oars, breathless and
panting with heat, drenched with perspiration, which ran into our
eyes and trickled down our breasts; and when visions of iced water
and bitter beer came tantalizingly to memory--for sea and sky were
equally hot, as the former seemed to welter and become oily under the
blaze of the latter--a sharp-winged bird that skimmed past us
suddenly caught the hollow eye of Hislop, who, I thought, was
sleeping.
"Do you see that bird, Tom," he exclaimed, half starting up from the
stern-sheets; "it is a man-of-war bird!"
"What then, sir?"
"We must be near land," replied the mate.
"Land!" reiterated every one in the boat, their voices expressing
joy, surprise, or incredulity.
"Is it Brazil?" asked Tattooed Tom, with amazement in his singular
face.
"I do not think so," said Hislop, passing a hand wearily and
reflectively over his pale forehead. "Brazil--it is impossible, by
the last reckoning I made before that Spaniard wounded me. But
Heaven only knows where we may have drifted to since then!"
"The wind and currents may have taken us many hundred miles from
where the last observation was made," added Carlton.
"But I am convinced that we are near land--look at the sea-wrack that
passes us now; and we must be out of the track of the Gulfweed,"
continued the mate with confidence.
"And may I never see the Nore again, if _that ain't land now_,
looming right a-head through the fog-bank!" exclaimed Tom, starting
up, and shading his eyes from the sun with both hands as he peered
intently westward.
As the reader may imagine, we all gazed anxiously enough in the
direction indicated by the old seaman, and a swell of rapture rose in
the breasts of all when something in the form of a headland or bluff
could be distinctly seen right ahead, bearing due west, about seven
miles distant, standing out from the bank of vapor, or looming like a
darker shadow _within_ it.
This appearance never changed in outline, but remained stationary,
and every moment became more defined and confirmed.
Exclamations of joy now broke from us, and we congratulated each
other on making the land so soon and so unexpectedly, without
enduring the miseries which so frequently fall to the lot of those
who are cast away, as we were, in an open boat at sea.
"But what land is it?" was the general inquiry.
Another allowance of grog was served round; the oars were again
shipped, we bent our backs and breasts sturdily to the task, and at
every stroke almost lifted the boat clean out of the shining water in
our eagerness to reach this suddenly discovered shore.
This had such an effect upon Marc Hislop, that though weak and
sinking as he had been, he begged that he might be allowed to steer
the boat a little way, while Tom Lambourne kept a bright look-out
ahead, to watch for any ripple or surf that might indicate the
locality of a treacherous coral reef, as such might prove dangerous
to a large and heavily laden craft like ours.
With every stroke of the bending oars the land seemed to rise higher
and more high.
Ere long we could make out its form clearly. It was bold, rocky, and
mountainous, and as the mist dispersed or rose upward into mid air,
we could see the dark brown of the bluff, and some trees of strange
aspect, with drooping foliage on its summit, were clearly defined, as
they stood between us and the blue sky beyond.
We soon made out distinctly that it was a large island. The shore
was somewhat level to the north-east, and in the centre towered an
almost perpendicular mountain of vast height, the sides of which
seemed covered with furze, gorse, and brushwood.
Elsewhere its dusky and copper-colored rocks started sheer out of the
sea, whose waters formed a zone of snow-white surf around their base.
We headed the boat to the north-east, where the shore seemed more
approachable, and as we pulled along it, but keeping fully three
miles off, when the land opened, we saw high crags, deep ravines,
shady woods and dells in the interior, though no appearance of
houses, of wigwams, or of inhabitants.
Many speculations were now ventured as to what island this might be.
"May it not be land that has never before been discovered?" I
suggested with a glow of pleasure, in the anticipation of being among
the first to tread an unexplored and hitherto unknown shore. Hislop
smiled and shook his head.
Henry Warren, who had been an old South-sea whaler, suggested that it
was the island Grando, but Hislop assured us that this was
impossible. In the first place, by the position of the sun, he could
see that we were not so far south as the parallel of Port San Giorgio
on the Brazilian shore; and in the second, the existence of such an
island was doubted.
"Can it be Trinidad Island--Tristan da Cunha, or the Rocks of Martin
Vaz?" asked Tom Lambourne.
"If the latter," replied Hislop, "we should now be in south latitude
20° 27', but this land in no way answers to the aspect of the Martin
Vaz Rocks."
"Did you ever see them, sir?" asked several.
"No; but they are described by La Perouse as appearing like _five_
distinct headlands." After pausing and pondering for a moment, he
suddenly added, with confidence, "It is the Island of Alphonso de
Albuquerque!"
"How do you know?" I inquired.
"By the appearance of that cliff, and the mountain inland."
"You have been here before?" asked Probart.
"Never; but I know it to be Alphonso by that cliff on the north, and
the mountain too, which were particularly described in a Spanish book
I lost in the _Eugenie_. The mountain is a peak which the author
says resembles--did any of you ever see a place like it before?"
"It is as like Tenny Reef from the port of Santa Cruz, as one egg is
like another!" exclaimed Tom Lambourne.
"Exactly, Tom, that is what the Spanish author likens it to, though
he does not use the simile. So if it is the island of Alphonso, we
are now somewhere in south latitude 37° 6', and west longitude 12°
2'. Pull southward, my lads, the shore opens a bit beyond that
headland. We shall find a smooth beach probably within the bight
yonder."
"Anyway we're not in pilot's water," added Tom, laughing; "give way,
mates--stretch out."
We pulled with a hearty will, and ere long were close in shore--so
close that our larboard oars seemed almost to touch the rocks which
rose sheer from the sea, like mighty cyclopean walls, but covered
with the greenest moss; they overhung and overshadowed the dark, deep
water that washed their base, and as they shielded us from the fierce
noonday heat of the sun, we found the partial coolness refreshing and
delightful.
As Hislop had foreseen, on rounding the bluff, the shore receded
inward, and through a line of white surf, like that which boils over
the bar at a river's mouth, we dashed into a beautiful little bay,
the sandy beach of which was shaded by groves of bright green trees.
Still we saw no trace of inhabitants; but selecting a small creek
which was almost concealed by trees that grew, like mangroves, close
to the edge of the water, we ran our boat in, moored her securely,
where none were likely to find her save ourselves, and then all
sprang joyously ashore--at least all save Hislop and Billy the cabin
boy, who remained to attend him, while we went on an exploring
expedition in search of natives or whatever might turn up next.