While the party sit in the piazza of a beautiful tree-shaded hotel, sipping iced sherbet, let me say a word about the nature of the Wolverine’s voyage.
The yacht did not belong to the Halls. She was lent them for the cruise round the Horn to the South Pacific, and many a beautiful island they meant to visit, and see many a strange and wondrous sight. For hitherto all their travelling experiences had been confined to Europe. But your true American wants to see all the world when he can afford it.
It was health the Halls were in search of, combined with pleasure if possible; but they meant to collect all the curios they could get, and they also felt certain—so Mrs Hall said—that they would find the South Sea savages very interesting persons indeed.
So have I myself found them, especially when their spears were whisking over my boat and they were dancing in warlike frenzy on the beach. In such cases, however, a shot or two from a good revolver has a wonderfully persuasive and calmative effect on even Somali Indians.
We British have called Scotland and England an isle of beauty, but I question very much if it can cope with Madeira. Here not only have we splendid mountains, clad in all the beauty of tropical and sub-tropical shrubs and trees, tremendous cliffs and gorges, raging torrents and cataracts, with many a bosky dell, lovely even as those birchen glades in Scotia, but in this heavenly isle there is the sunshine that overspreads all and sparkles on the sea. And that sea, too!—who could describe the splendour of its blue on a calm day, patched here and there towards the shore with browns, seagreens, and opals? No wonder that after making several visits and picnics in shore and high among the mountains, borne there by sturdy Portuguese in hammocks, Mrs Hall should declare that she felt better already.
It was with some reluctance that Mr Hall ordered the anchor to be got up at last, and all sail made for the Canaries. Near sunset was it when they sailed slowly away, a sunset of indescribable beauty. A great grey misty bank of cloud was hanging many degrees above the mountains, but beneath it was more clear and streaked with long trailing cloudlets of crimson, light yellow, and purple, the rifts between being of the deepest sea-green. But over the hills hung a shadow or mist of smoky blue.
Then descended the sun, sinking in the waters far to the west, a ball of crimson fire with a pathway of blood ’twixt the horizon and the yacht.
Then night fell, with but a brief twilight. There was going to be a change, however. The mate, a sturdy, red-faced, weather-beaten, but comely fellow, sought the captain’s cabin and reported a rapidly-falling glass, and the gradual obliteration of the stars, that erst had shone so sweetly.
How swiftly comes a squall at times in these seas! A huge bank of blackest darkness was seen rapidly advancing towards the ship, and before sail could be taken in or steam got up she was in the grasp of that merciless demon squall.
For a minute or two she fled before it and the terrible waves, quivering the while from stem to stern like a dying deer.