After many days' sailing they sighted the beautiful Canary Islands, and then the Cape de Verd Islands, getting pretty close to one which I think was St. Antonio. But they did not land, for the breeze was a spanking trade, and carried them on and on all day and all night, as if their ship had been a fairy ship and the sea around a fairy sea.
There was certainly not much in the shape of adventure, however, and not a deal to be seen; although Dr. Reikie, ever busy in the pursuit of science, found much in that deep-blue sparkling ocean to interest him: for he trailed little open gauze nets overboard, and the animalcules that he caught thus and spread out on black card-board with the aid of needles were extremely beautiful to behold. It needed good eyes to see some of the worthy medico's specimens, however. Here, for instance, were tiny transparent fishes, seemingly, all perfect and complete, yet so small they could have swum easily through the eye of a bodkin; little star-fish too, and the drollest and daftest looking shrimps you could imagine, and these were no bigger than the head of an old-fashioned pin. Under a large magnifying-glass, however, you could see even the hearts of these little fishes beating.
"Oh, isn't it wonderful!" Dr. Reikie would say; "and to think that God made them all, and every tiny blood-vessel in their bits of bodies."
One night about five bells in the first watch there was a cry of, "Man overboard."
This was quickly followed by the bos'n's pipe—"Away, lifeboat's crew."
But who was it? Everybody looked about on deck or below to see if they missed a messmate.
Rattle-rattle, rumble-tumble, how those good fellows fly on deck! Hardly a minute elapses ere the boat reaches the water on a level keel and with a dull plash. Then there are the swish of the oars, and the clunk-clunk in the rowlocks, as she speeds away astern.
The life-buoy has been lit and let go, and is burning brightly enough far away astern yonder, and as speedily as possible the ship is hove to.
For that life-buoy the men are now steadily pulling as if their own lives depended on the strength of their brawny arms, while the sub-lieutenant himself as coxswain stands tiller in hand in the stern sheets.
What a long pull it seems to be! But they reach the beacon light at last.