When the watering-party returned we had done with Trinidad; so both boats were hoisted on deck, and a melancholy ceremony was performed: our very ancient dinghy, which was too rotten to bear any further patching, and was not worth the room she used to take up on deck, was broken up and handed over to the cook as firewood.
A tot of rum was served out to each hand, we bade farewell to Trinidad, the foresail was allowed to draw, and we sailed away.
It had long since been decided that, whether the treasure was discovered or not, we should sail from our desert island to its wealthy namesake, Trinidad in the West Indies—a very different sort of a place. The distance between the two Trinidads is, roughly, 2,900 miles; but we knew that the voyage before us was not likely to be a lengthy one, for everything is in favour of a vessel bound the way we were going. In the first place, it was very unlikely that we should encounter head winds between our islet and Cape St. Roque, and from that point we should most probably have the wind right aft for the rest of the way, as the trade-winds blow regularly along the coasts of north Brazil and the Guianas. In the next place, by sailing at a certain distance from the land, we could keep our vessel in the full strength of the south equatorial current, which runs at the rate of two or three miles an hour in the direction of our course. We had, it is true, to cross the line once more, with its belt of doldrums; but we knew that we should not be much delayed by these tedious equatorial calms, as they do not prevail on the coast of Brazil to anything like the extent they do in mid-Atlantic; besides which, the favourable current would be carrying us along with it across the belt, and enable us to travel fifty miles or so a day, even in a flat calm.
This kindly current would, indeed, carry us straight to our port, for it sweeps through the Gulf of Paria as well as by the east side of Trinidad, and, as every schoolboy knows in these enlightened days, thence flows round the Caribbean Sea and ultimately emerges from it under another and better-known title—the Gulf Stream.
With the old 'Falcon' I had sailed over a portion of this route, accomplishing the voyage from Pernambuco to Georgetown, Demerara—a distance of about 2,000 miles—in ten days, thus keeping up an average of 200 miles a day. At this rate the 'Alerte' ought to get to Trinidad in fifteen days; but we were not fated to have such luck as that.
CHAPTER XXII.
HOMEWARD BOUND.
We had bidden farewell to the wild spot that had been our home for three months, but we did not lose sight of Trinidad for upwards of thirty hours.
We had got under weigh at sunset on February 14. A slight draught from the hills carried us a mile or so outside North Point, when we were becalmed and made no progress at all for many hours; and when at last the north-east breeze sprang up, it was so very light that at eight on the following morning the island was not more than twelve miles astern of us.