The first was of my lot if I remained in the West Indies, or joined the bold adventurers who were pushing across the isthmus of Darien, to launch upon a career of fortune in the South Sea. I pictured myself the commander of a stout ship of war, nay, the admiral of a fleet of stout ships of war, carrying fire and sword into Panama, Payta, or Acapulco, capturing Spanish galleons by the squadron, and dictating terms to the captive governors of overthrown cities. Then, as I lay thinking, and watching the gorgeous proportions of this air-painted dream, it faded away, and another and a humbler vision rose; it represented the green fields and white beaches of the fair coast of Fife—the straggling cottages of Kirkleslie—the pier of whinstone, stretching forth seawards—the little rippling bay, where the Burn of Balwearie poured its frothing waters into the brine—the green bourocks of bent and waving grass, which surrounded it, marked with their brown patches of dry herring nets, and the rocking boats, riding to their grapnels in the bay. Then I saw approaching the shore a stout brig, lofty in her rig and graceful in her form, and I saw the fishers, and their wives, and their bairns, all running down to the beach, and shouting, with joyful clamour, that here was come Leonard Lindsay’s new brig, the Royal Thistle, fresh from the stocks at Leith.
And there was another consideration too. It is sad to remember it now, but it was joyful to dream of it then. I had a long tryste at Alicant, and I thought how proud I would be, in my own stout ship, to carry my betrothed from her Spanish city to the northern home which she had chosen and which she would love.
If both of these plans were, in the ending, empty and vain, at least one was built on a less airy foundation than the other. I determined not to grasp at overmuch. I decided not to let go the substance for the shadow, and at length I started up from the grass, and with a heart light as that of a boy let loose from school, I shouted, ‘Home, home! the rough winds and the rugged coasts of Scotland before all these teeming lands and summer seas!’
Having once formed this resolution, I was miserable until I had the means of putting it in execution. From the grey dawn to the grey eve I sat upon my watch-tower on the hill; sometimes the Indians accompanied me, and we talked touching the only subject on which they cared to converse—the past glories of Guanhani, and the future happiness of Coyaba. Sometimes I was alone, tossing restlessly upon the turf in my impatience, wondering whether all vessels had ceased to sail the sea, since I saw none,—plucking out my flint and steel every quarter of an hour, to take care that all was ready for firing the beacon at a moment’s notice; or noting any change in the slant of the tradewind, which might cause a vessel to diverge from her course between the islands and the main. Several times I attempted to patch up the broken boat of the ‘Saucy Susan,’ which lay upon a sheltered bit of beach, with the tide flowing in and out of her, but she was injured beyond my powers as a ship carpenter to repair, and besides, had she been afloat and sound, I had nothing of which I could make a sail. The Indians possessed a canoe, but only fit for paddling.
During these tedious weeks, I strained my memory in vain to make out whether I had ever heard of such an island as that on which I stood. In most of the maps of the Caribbean Sea, small specks of nameless isles are laid down in great profusion all round Cape Gracias à Dios, but I knew that these charts were, for the most part, to be little depended upon, except as regarded the great islands and headlands; and I remembered the labyrinth of rocks, islets, and reefs, in which we found the dwarf pilot, and which were not even indicated in any one chart we had on board the ‘Will-o’-the-Wisp.’ The Indians said, that the time of ships coming hither was very uncertain; sometimes two or three passed by in a moon, sometimes two or three moons passed by during which the sea would be sailless; now a passing ship would keep far off, so that her canvas would show not bigger than the wing of a sea-fowl; anon she would anchor in the lee of the island, and lie there for days, filling her water-casks from the rain ponds in the hollows of the rocks, and allowing the men to scamper at large, hunting pigeons and noddies, or searching for turtles’ eggs, all over the island.
But at length my happy moment arrived—the long-looked for came at last. I ought to have mentioned, that the island upon the windward-side was indented by a large bay, which stretched from one extremity of the land to the other. In the centre of this bay, and near the beach, were various rocky islets and sand-banks, amongst which on arriving I had been driven, and upon each horn of the crescent, long points of high and rugged rock jutted forth into the sea, making that appear a deep bay which was in reality a mere shallow coast indentation. My signal-post, as I called it, was near the centre of the bay, and about a mile from each of the jutting and rocky horns which I have mentioned; the hut of the Indians being among the clefts and bushes beneath.
I was wakened early one morning by the howl of the wind through the trees and precipices above us, and, presently going forth, found it blowing a hard gale right into the bay—the rocky islets before the beach being only now and then to be seen like black specks amid the foam. The gale increased as the day advanced, and about noon, a tremendous breaker swept so high up the beach as to catch the wreck of the ‘Saucy Susan’s’ boat, and fairly to drive it to pieces on the shingle. The day was very dark and dismal, the clouds flying fast and low, and the sea-birds making, in flocks, for the cover of the land. The horizon from my look-out was only a few miles in extent, but within it, the seas broke furiously, and the surf upon either horn of the bay was grand to look at. In the afternoon, I wandered forth alone upon the beach—the Indians, who did not relish such weather, keeping snug at home—and remained for hours in a sheltered nook upon the southern ridge of the bay, watching the great seas rolling in and assaulting the rocks.
The day was wearing away, and the sun was setting behind the island, when I suddenly heard a shout to seaward. Starting up to my feet, I saw about a cable’s length distant from the bluff, on the outside of the bay, and a little to windward, a small sloop, showing but a rag of sail, and struggling hard to weather the point. The bark, though very small, was decked from stem to stern. Had it not been for that, she would not have lived a moment in such a sea. As it was, she bent over, so that I could see three men lying upon the slanting planks, holding on to the weather-rigging, while the steersman, made fast on the weather side to a staunchion of the light rail, which run round the sloop, worked the tiller by means of blocks and tackling. It was an even chance, so far as I could see, whether the sloop would beat round into the bay, or be shivered upon the headland, and I rushed as far out as I could upon the rocks to watch the catastrophe. On she came, plunging and tearing over the seas, hove up aloft, so that she was sometimes almost on a level with the ground I stood on, then ducking into the trough, so that I could only see the top of her tiny mainsail, with the spray of the next coming sea, torn up by the wind, and pelting over and over it. The figures on board held on to the weather-bulwarks, like grim death; but as she closed nearer and nearer with the rocks, I saw two of them kick off their shoes, and strip their doublets. A moment would now decide their fate. The sloop was not half-a-score fathoms from the outermost point, over which the sea boiled white. She sank heavily into a deep foaming trough of sea, and her sail flapped in the lull. Up again, as though cast by a sling! She leaped at the next surge—a blast which made me stagger back on the rocks—almost tearing the mast out of her, and lifting her, as it were, bodily over the furiously ridging and tumbling water. The wave burst in milk-white foam beneath, the spray flying round and over me, but from the very centre, as it appeared, of the seething hissing mass of the rebuffed and broken billow, the gallant little bark flew triumphantly round the rock, and into the bay.
‘Hurrah,’ I shouted; ‘bravely done!’
The men on board caught my words, even through the roar of the surf. He who was steering, and who had been hitherto crouching down, watching the run of the seas, looked up. Could I believe my eyes? Nicky Hamstring!