CHAPTER XII.
Relates how a Desert Island became a Rock of Good Hope, and other Hopeful Matters which to be understood must be read of.
“You now see,” went on the Captain, when the story was again resumed, “that the Dean and myself had by this time fallen into a regular course of life. ‘What cannot be helped,’ said the Dean, ‘we must make the best of.’
“Being thus obliged to make the best of it, we became resigned; and here let me say that even now I feel much surprised at the ease with which we dropped into ways suitable to our new life. You have seen already how one difficulty after another vanished before our patient efforts; and now that we had a fire to warm us, and a hut to shelter us, we felt as if we could overcome almost anything. So we gained great courage, and were fast settling down to business, like any other people, feeling that our lives were at least in no present danger.
“The Dean and I had a conversation about this time, which I will try to repeat as nearly as I can. We were seated on the hillside overlooking the sea to the west, attracted by what we at first took for a ship under full sail, steering right in towards the island; but you can imagine how great was our disappointment when we found that what we had taken for a ship was nothing more than an iceberg looming up above the sea in a misty atmosphere. This was the third time we had been deceived in that manner. Once the Dean had come rushing towards me, shouting at the top of his voice, ‘The fleet! the fleet!’ meaning the whale-ships; but he might just as well have saved himself all that trouble, for ‘the fleet’ proved to be only a great group of icebergs; but when I told him so he would hardly believe it, until he became at last convinced that they were not moving.
“You must know that these icebergs assume all sorts of shapes, and it was very natural, since we were always on the lookout for ships, that our imaginations should be excited and disturbed, and ready to see at any time what we most wanted to see; nor were we at all peculiar in this, as many people might tell you who were never cast away in the cold.
“So it is not surprising that we should cry out very frequently ‘A sail, a sail!’ when there was not a sail perhaps within many hundred miles of us.
“Well, as I was going to say, the Dean and I sat upon the hillside overlooking the sea, thinking the icebergs were ships, or hoping so at least, until hope died away, and then it was that we fell to talking.