There were few places now where they could receive letters from home. But letters were sent to England, and despatches also, by every opportunity, and such opportunities come to ships long at sea far oftener than landsmen would or could imagine.
It was only by overhauling mercantile vessels that any news of the country at all could be obtained. But some of these had somewhat recent newspapers, and what a grand gift to the Breezy was a bundle of them!
They were read and re-read by the officers. Their pages were kept as clean as the leaves of a Bible. When the ward-room officers had them about all by heart, the warrant officers had them, and finally, the best of the crew, who read them to their respective messmates.
The adventures of the men of the Breezy were mostly those of all men who go down to the sea in ships. But, dangers and difficulties more numerous. They saw, during those busy nine months, every conceivable phase of sea life. They had to battle with winds and currents, encountered terrible storms, the life of the ship and the lives of the crew oftentimes hanging literally on the thread of a screw, or on a bolt.
It was the shoal water and the reefs, however, that formed the principal danger, and these they were nearly almost among.
The savages they seldom feared, but the savages feared them, never having seen such a strange naval monstrosity as the Breezy in their lives before. Some of the islanders, both men and women, were meek and mild, as well as fearless, and though armed to the teeth, the men at least, with bows and poisoned arrows, and clubs, axes and spears, it was safe enough to mingle with them.
They would part with anything for calico, tobacco, or tinned provisions. They surrounded the Breezy in canoes laden to the gunwale with all manner of delicious fruit and vegetables, to say nothing of edible birds, lizards, etc., some even brought flowers.
On the other hand, they expressed themselves ready and willing to barter their wives or daughters away, or even fine fat little baby boys, for anything.
I never have found why savage islanders sometimes press sailors to purchase a fat little baby boy. I suppose they fancy our fellows make meat of such little chaps, because I've heard of one being offered in barter along with a bunch of forest fowls, or edible lizards.
Some rather wild adventures our Breezy men had among the wilder and more treacherous of these islanders, many of them loaded with Brummagem rifles, which, though they could carry farther than arrows, were seldom well aimed.