Out of Cherbourg we steamed again, sulky enough; for the delay would cause us to get home on the Sunday evening instead of the Sunday morning; and ran northward for the Needles. With what joy we saw at last the white wall of the island glooming dim ahead. With what joy we first discerned that huge outline of a visage on Freshwater Cliff, so well known to sailors, which, as the eye catches it in one direction, is a ridiculous caricature; in another, really noble, and even beautiful. With what joy did we round the old Needles, and run past Hurst Castle; and with what shivering, too. For the wind, though dead south, came to us as a continental wind, harsh and keen from off the frozen land of France, and chilled us to the very marrow all the way up to Southampton.
But there were warm hearts and kind faces waiting us on the quay, and good news too. The gentlemen at the Custom-house courteously declined the least inspection of our luggage; and we were at once away in the train home. At first, I must confess, an English winter was a change for the worse. Fine old oaks and beeches looked to us, fresh from ceibas and balatas, like leafless brooms stuck into the ground by their handles; while the want of light was for some days painful and depressing But we had done it; and within the three months, as we promised. As the king in the old play says, ‘What has been, has been, and I’ve had my hour.’ At last we had seen it; and we could not unsee it. We could not not have been in the Tropics.
Footnotes:
[{4}] Raleigh’s Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Iles of Azores.
[{8}] Chiroteuthi and Onychoteuthi.
[{15a}] Cocoloba uvifera.
[{15b}] Plumieria.
[{25a}] Anona squamosa.
[{25b}] A. muricata.
[{25c}] A. chierimolia.