That light-houses have not been erected on the dangerous head-lands and reefs which line the Bahama channel, is a strange oversight or neglect on the part of the governments of the United States and England, which of all maritime nations are most immediately concerned in the object. Suitable light-houses on the most dangerous points, would annually save, from otherwise inevitable destruction, many vessels and preserve hundreds of valuable lives. The profession of these marauders would be, in such a case, but a sinecure; provided they would allow the lights to remain. But, unless each tower were converted into a well-manned gun-battery the piratical character of these men will preclude any hope of their permanent establishment. Men of their buccaneering habits are not likely to lie quietly on their oars, and see their means of livelihood torn from them by the secure navigation of these waters. They will sound, from island to island, the tocsin for the gathering of their strength, and concentrate for the destruction of these enemies to their honest calling, before they have cast their cheering beams over these stormy seas a score of nights.
As we approached the Hole in the Wall, the breeze which we had brought down the channel, stole in advance and set in motion the fleet of becalmed vessels, which rolled heavily on the long, ground-swell, about a league ahead of us. The spur or promontory of Abaco, around which we were sailing, is a high, wall-like ridge of rock, whose surface gradually inclines from the main body of the island to its abrupt termination about a quarter of a league into the sea. As we sailed along its eastern side we could not detect the opening from which it derives its name. The eye met only a long black wall of rock, whose rugged projections were hung with festoons of dark purple sea-weed, and around whose base the waters surged, with a roar heard distinctly by us, three miles from the island.
On rounding the extremity of the head-land, and bearing up a point or two, the arch in the Cape gradually opened till it became wholly visible, apparently about half the altitude of, and very similar in appearance to the Natural bridge in Virginia. The chasm is irregularly arched, and broader at thirty feet from the sea than at its base. The water is of sufficient depth, and the arch lofty enough, to allow small fishing vessels to pass through the aperture, which is about one hundred feet in length through the solid rock. There is a gap which would indicate the former existence of a similar cavity, near the end of this head-land. A large, isolated mass of rock is here detached from the main wall, at its termination in the sea, which was undoubtedly, at some former period, joined to it by a natural arch, now fallen into the water, as, probably, will happen to this within a century.
These cavities are caused by the undermining of the sea, which, dashing unceasingly against the foundations of the wall, shatters and crumbles it by its constant abrasion, opens through it immense fissures, and loosens large fragments of the rock, that easily yield and give way to its increased violence; while the upper stratum, high beyond the reach of the surge, remains firm, and, long after the base has crumbled into the sea, arches over like a bridge the chasm beneath. By and by this falls by its own weight, and is buried beneath the waves.
As the shades of night fell over the sea, and veiled the land from our eyes, we had a fresh object of excitement in giving chase to the vessels which, as the sun went down among them, were scattered thickly along the western horizon far ahead of us—ships, brigs, and schooners, stretching away under all sail before the evening breeze to the south and west. We had lost sight of them after night had set in, but at about half past eight in the evening, as we all were peering through the darkness, upon the qui vive for the strangers, a bright light flashed upon our eyes over the water, and at the same moment the lookout forward electrified us with the cry——
"A ship dead ahead, sir!"
The captain seized his speaking-trumpet, and sprang to the bows; but we were there before him, and discovered a solitary light burning at the base of a dark pyramid, which towered gloomily in the obscurity of the night. The outline of the object was so confused and blended with the sky, that we could discern it but indistinctly. To our optics it appeared, as it loomed up in the night-haze, to be a ship of the largest class. The spy glass was in immediate requisition, but soon laid aside again.
Let me inform you that "day and night" marked upon the tube of a spy-glass, signifies that it may be used in the day, and kept in the beckets at night.
We had been gathered upon the bowsprit and forecastle but a few seconds, watching in silence the dark moving tower on the water before us, as we approached it rapidly, when we were startled by the sudden hail of the stranger, who was now hauling up on our weather bow—
"Ship-ahoy!" burst loudly over the water from the hoarse throat of a trumpet.