But the fact that the main and mizen sails were fore and aft ones lessened the labour considerably.
. . . . . .
The voyage to Teneriffe was a long and a slow one, and on a beam wind most of the way. It was one, however, that few on board the Zingara were ever likely to forget.
There was a chastened kind of sorrow in the hearts of all, that found ascendency sometimes, but for the most part it was joy and hope that came uppermost.
But what a change! Out here on the bright clear waters, soothed by balmy winds, cheered by the warm sunshine, to look back now to that black and dreary weed-pack, the Sea of Sargasso, was like opening a darksome burial vault and gazing into the gloom and night of death.
Long anxiety had told on our heroes, and even on Teenie and Sister Leona, and both the latter were thinner in face than they ought to have been, and had lost something of the bloom that should dwell for ever on the cheeks of childhood or of youth.
But from the very day the Sea of Sargasso was left behind, things took a change for the better. Every one began to regain health and spirits, and each day that dawned took their thoughts farther and farther away from that nightmare dream of two years, spent in the midst of the dreariest sea in the wide, wide world.
Though busily engaged all day, our more intimate heroes, Barclay Stuart and Davie Drake, found time to arrange the hundreds of curios, animal and vegetable, which they had collected while prisoners in the echoless ocean.
It was Barclay’s intention to present those to the British Museum, so he had the fauna labelled, with day and date, and all he knew about them, where and how caught, and their manners and habits of life. With the various kind of weeds he was not less particular, nor with the different kinds of clay and sand that had been dredged up from the bottom.