This, or something like it, is the way we usually spent our evenings in fine weather.
In two days time we were, or thought we were, not far off the entrance to the First Narrows, but the horizon was hazy.
The same afternoon a great red-funnelled steamer hove in sight, and came ploughing and churning on in our direction. She was English, and homeward bound. How glad we were! We did not take ten minutes to finish our letters. They carried all kinds of tender messages and wishes and hopes, and told how well and happy we were and expected to remain.
I went in charge of the boat with the letters, and was very kindly received. As I stood on the deck of the fine steamer, I really could not help wishing I was going home. It was but for a moment; then I remembered I had duties that called me elsewhere.
The ships parted with cheers, and the flock of seagulls, Cape pigeons, and albatrosses that had been following the steamer divided, one half going on after her, the others electing to share our fortunes, and pick up our cook’s tit-bits from off the water.
We were now in Possession Bay, which surrounds the entrance to the First Narrows of Magellan Straits; but though the wind was fair, there was a strange haze lying low all round the horizon, so our good captain determined to keep “dodging” or tacking about till the weather should clear.
Captain Coates had told us at dinner that for his part he would sooner go round the Horn any day, than through the Straits, but he had important business at Sandy Point—a Chilian town of small dimensions on the Patagonia shore—and—“duty is duty.”
The sun went down blood-red in the haze, and with as little sail as possible on her we went tacking to and fro. Two great albatrosses were sailing round and round, sometimes coming so close that we could hear the rustle of their feathers and note the glitter of their green eyes and the shape of their powerful beaks. I could not help thinking of the words of Coleridge in that weird poem, “The Ancient Mariner.”
At length did come an albatross,
Thorough the fog it came,
As if it had been a Christian soul
We hailed it in God’s name.
And a good south wind sprang up behind,
The albatross did follow,
And every day for food or play
Came to the mariner’s “hollo!”
It may have been these lines that I conned over to myself, or the mournful sough to that was in the wind to-night; but, at all events, some sort of heaviness seemed to lie about my heart that I could not account for.