On the shore, at this season, when the sunshine was reflected from the sloping faces of the volcanic rocks and from the surface of the sea, the heat was beyond all description—intense, breathless, and suffocating, so that the lungs would collapse painfully, in the difficulty of respiration.
To breathe was like attempting it at the mouth of a newly opened furnace, and so I usually retired inland and sought the cool solitude of the deep thickets, or wandered through groves of solemn, impressive, and majestic old trees; for some were there so old, that they must have cast the shadows of their foliage on Alphonso de Albuquerque, or Tristan de Cunha, and their bearded followers.
How many ocean storms had swept their leaves into the waste of waters since then!
We had now been five days on the island without a sail being seen, though more than half our time was spent in watching the horizon; and so Tom Lambourne's old shirt still waved in vain from the boom-end on the mountain-top.
On the fifth day, however, to our surprise, the signal was no longer visible, so we supposed that a gust of wind had overthrown it in the night.
Lambourne, Carlton, and Probart started for the mountain-top to restore it, while Hislop and I rambled into the woods, where we had a view of the shining sea to the westward. The waves came in long rollers, as there was a fresh breeze blowing from the west, and the foam rose white and high on the tremendous bluffs of the Inaccessible Isles, as we named them.
All the water between them was a sheet of sparkling and snowy froth, amid which, had we been nearer, we should doubtless have seen the black heads of the sea lions, as they sported in the spray and sunshine.
On asking Hislop how far he thought we were from the continents of Africa and South America, he replied without hesitation,—
"We are about fifteen hundred miles from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata on the westward, and twelve hundred odd from the Cape of Good Hope on the east; but there is land nearer to us——"
"Land nearer!" I reiterated.