Occasionally now a sea-elephant looks up to stare at us, and now and then a shoal of the ubiquitous porpoises go dancing and cooing past, or a solitary whale ploughs across our hawse but deigns not even to look at us. He or she is intent only on her own business. Perhaps she has a calf alongside her sucking like an overgrown puppy—great, sweet innocent,—and she is taking it north to warmer water.
My conscience!—as they say in the north of bonnie Scotland,—how ships that can only sail have to rough it while rounding the Cape! Snow and fog, icebergs, and sometimes howling winds from the west-north-west!
"And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold;
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald."
Yes, green enough as to its sides sometimes, but all clad in deep, deep snow above.
And we now walk the icy decks carefully, blowing occasionally on our half-frozen though mitted fingers. The ear-lappets of our sou'-westers are pulled down, our faces being either blue or white according to the strength of the circulation.
Small pieces of ice rattle along our quarters and bump us, but we care not for that; we do but pray that in the darkness of night we may not foul the fore-foot of some fearful berg. Should we do so, backward our barque would reel and stagger, to sink all too soon in the deepest, blackest sea, that rolls anywhere around this terrestrial ball.
To our starboard, though we cannot see it, lies the terrible island of Tierra del Fuego, literally the Land of Fire. Land of the canoe islanders, the most implacable savages to be met with anywhere. Who is going to take his life in his hand and spend a year in exploring this wild country? Will you come with me, boy-readers? Why, we should make a name to ourselves, if not fortunes. We should come back, if the savages didn't roast and eat us, with a book. We should add much to the geography and the anthropology of the world, and discover—coals.
But our ship is clear away from the black stormy sea at last, and clear of the ice.
So we sail merrily on across a wide and trackless ocean on a beam wind for weeks and weeks, till, hurrah! we are past Bounty Island and reach bonnie Dunedin itself. And here let me tell you, that if there be a single drop of Scottish blood in your veins, you are sure of a Highland welcome.
The cruise described in this chapter is just as near to the life as I can make it, and pretty much what our bold crew of the Osprey found it. And the paddle-frigate soon after this came across the new flag-ship for the Australian station. Captain Leeward himself boarded her, accompanied by a lieutenant, leaving the other officers to wait impatiently for his return.