LEAVING GREENLAND.
From the Chief Trader, Mr. Anderson, as well as from the Inspector, I had much kindly assistance in perfecting my collections and in completing my series of photographic views, and I found myself so agreeably as well as profitably occupied that I was truly loath to quit the good harbor; but it was necessary for me to be hastening home, as the nights were growing dark, and I did not wish to be caught among the icebergs without some sunlight to guide me; so, when the first fine wind came, I huddled my collections aboard, bade good-by, saluted the Danish ensign for the last time, and—well, we did over again what we had done a dozen times before—dove into a villainous fog-bank, out of which came a rush of wind that sent us homeward a little faster than we cared to go.
FLYING BEFORE THE GALE.
It was a regular equinoctial storm, and, from the time of leaving Disco until we had passed Newfoundland, it scarcely once relaxed its grip of us. We were blown out through Davis Strait even more fiercely than we had been blown in. At one time we were beset with a perfect hurricane, and how the schooner staggered through it was little short of a miracle. Ulysses could hardly have had a worse dusting, when his stupid crew let loose all the winds which Æolus had so kindly bagged up for him. Every stitch of canvas was ripped up but the little rag of a topsail, under which we scudded before the gale through four days, running down in one four-and-twenty hours two hundred and twenty miles of latitude. The seas which came tumbling after us, each one seemingly determined to roll over the poop, were perfectly frightful; especially when one looked aloft and saw the little patch of canvas threatening every moment to give way, and heard the waters gurgling under the counter as the stern went down and the bows went up, while a very Niagara was roaring and curveting after us, as if maddened with defeat, and with each new effort the more determined to catch the craft before she should mount the crest ahead. But she slipped from under every threatening danger as gracefully, if not as
"Swift, as an eagle cleaving the liquid air,"
and, leaving the parted billows foaming and roaring behind her, passed on triumphant and unharmed.
CRIPPLED BY THE STORM.
When off Labrador, the wind hauled suddenly to the westward, and we had to give up the chase, and get the schooner's head to it. McCormick had managed to patch up the foresail, and, getting a triangular piece of it rigged for a storm-sail, we proposed to heave her to. There did not appear to be much chance of a successful termination to this new venture, but it was clearly this or nothing. The sail was set and the determination come to just in time, for we shipped a terrible sea over the quarter, the schooner gave a lurch to leeward, and then righted so suddenly that the little topsail which had done us such good service went into ribbons, the topmast cracked off at the cap, and crash went the jib-boom right away afterward. "Hard a-lee!" was rather a melancholy sort of order to give under the circumstances, and, as was to be expected, when the helm went down we were thrown into the trough of the next sea, where we were caught amidships by the ugliest wave that I ever happened to look upon, and down it thundered upon us, staving in the bulwarks, sweeping the decks from stem to stern, and carrying every thing overboard, our water-casks included. The schooner shivered all over as if every rib in her little body was broken, and for a moment I felt sure that she was knocked over on her beam ends; but the craft seemed to possess more lives than a cat, and, righting in an instant, shook herself free of the water, took the next wave on the bow, rose to it nobly, and then shot squarely into the wind's eye. "Bravely done, little lady!" was McCormick's caressing approval of her good behavior.
We lay hove to for three days, at the end of which time we found ourselves drifted from our course two hundred miles. Meanwhile, there had been a good deal of alarm caused by the loss of our water-casks. We had an extra cask or so in the hold, but these could not be got up without removing the main-hatch, an effort not to be thought of, as the decks were flooded and the vessel would be swamped; so I at once set myself to work to remedy the evil, and succeeded perfectly. With a tea-kettle for a retort and a barrel for a condenser, I managed to distill water enough for the entire ship's company; and, in less than three hours after the disaster, all alarm vanished when it was known that a stream of pure water was trickling from this novel contrivance in the officers' cabin, at the rate of ten gallons a day.
RECEPTION IN HALIFAX.