MONCRIEFF RELATES HIS EXPERIENCES.
Our life at sea had been like one long happy dream. That, at all events, is how it had felt to me. 'A dream I could have wished to last for aye.' I was enamoured of the ocean, and more than once I caught myself yearning to be a sailor. There are people who are born with strange longings, strange desires, which only a life on the ever-changing, ever-restless waves appears to suit and soothe. To such natures the sea seems like a mother—a wild, hard, harsh mother at times, perhaps, but a mother who, if she smiles but an hour, makes them forget her stormy anger of days or weeks.
But the dream was past and gone. And here we had settled down for a spell at Buenos Ayres. We had parted with the kindly captain and surgeon of the Canton, with many a heartily expressed hope of meeting again another day, with prayers on their side for our success in the new land, with kindliest wishes on ours for a pleasant voyage and every joy for them.
Dear me! What a very long time it felt to look back to, since we had bidden them 'good-bye' at home! How very old I was beginning to feel! I asked my brothers if their feelings were the same, and found them identical. Time had been apparently playing tricks on us.
And yet we did not look any older in each other's eyes, only just a little more serious. Yes, that was it—serious. 87 Even Dugald, who was usually the most light-hearted and merry of the three of us, looked as if he fully appreciated the magnitude of what we had undertaken.
Here we were, three—well, young men say, though some would have called us boys—landed on a foreign shore, without an iota of experience, without much knowledge of the country apart from that we had gleaned from books or gathered from the conversations of Bombazo and Moncrieff. And yet we had landed with the intention, nay, even the determination, to make our way in the new land—not only to seek our fortunes, but to find them.
Oh, we were not afraid! We had the glorious inheritance of courage, perseverance, and self-reliance. Here is how Donald, my brother, argued one night:
'Look, here, Murdo,' he said. 'This is a land of milk and honey, isn't it? Well, we're going to be the busy bees to gather it. It is a silver land, isn't it? Well, we're the boys to tap it. Fortunes are made here, and have been made. What is done once can be done five hundred times. Whatever men dare they can do. Quod erat demonstrandum.'
'Et nil desperandum,' added Dugald.
'I'm not joking, I can tell you, Dugald, I'm serious now, and I mean to remain so, and stick to work—aren't you, Murdo?'