Creggan and his friend brought from Ciudad Bolivar many strange curios, and at the first chance that offered he sent these home to his mother, and many to Matty, for sailors when far away at sea never forget the dear ones at home.
After dropping down to the mouth of the river Orinoco, young Señor Miguel stood out to sea some distance to be clear of shoals. Then the wind being fair, though light, fires were banked on the little yacht, and slowly along the coast northwards they held a course.
All around here the sea is very lovely indeed—beyond compare.
When at Miguel's mansion our heroes had been startled by a shock of earthquake, accompanied by terrible thunder and lightning, more vivid than they had ever seen before. Miguel made light of it next day. He said it was only a baby-quake, and couldn't have rocked a cradle or basinette.
Anyhow, it seemed to have brought fine weather, and now the sky above and the sea below were both an azure blue, the wavelets sparkling like diamond dust, and now and then breaking into tiny caps of snow-white spray, as the gentle wind toyed with and fanned them.
Skip-jacks now and then darted from wave to wave; blue-black flying-fish, too, flew high into the sunshine, apparently singing I would I were a bird.
Sometimes these got on board at night, leaping high towards the lanterns. When Creggan saw them there, he picked them up and threw them safely back into the sea.
"Why should we," he said, "who have so many of the good things of this world, cruelly take the lives of those gems of the ocean wave?"
Shoals of porpoises were common enough, and occasionally a sea-cow with splendid eyes would raise her beautiful sleek, dark head above the water, and gaze long and curiously at the white-sailed passing yacht.
Sometimes Miguel laid to his vessel and lowered a boat, that he and his guests might enjoy a few hours' fishing. And it was fishing, too. The fish seemed as keen to be caught as they were in Duntulm Bay when Creggan, our hero, was a little boy, and this brought back to him sunny memories of days never to be forgotten, so that he often closed his eyes in the bright sunshine that he might think once more of the past, and long to be back again in Skye, the Island of Wings.