Darkness was soon there, but still the sunset lingered in rays of fire upon the mighty Peak of Adam, on which the eye never tired of gazing.
By midnight we were abreast of it, and all was darkness at last, save where the millions of stars were sparkling in the wide blue dome of the sky.
Hislop and I were in the morning watch when the ship arrived off the mouth of the harbor of Santa Cruz—that pretty town, which Humboldt termed the grand caravanserai between Spain and the Indies.
A flash that broke upon the darkness, with a light puff of smoke floating away from the old castle walls, indicated the morning gun, and that dawn was visible.
It seemed as if it were but yesterday when the Eugenie and the Costa Rican brig had worked out of the same harbor together, in the same species of dull twilight, and that all which had passed since that time had been a dream.
We beat in with the breeze ahead. The light of another day was rapidly descending from the summit of the peak, and already that green girdle, named the Region of Laurels, was shining in the sunbeams; so ere long we saw the windows of the custom-house, which stands above the long mole, and all the shaded lattices of the terraced streets of Santa Cruz, glittering in gold and purple sheen.
The anchors were ready to be let go; the chain-cables were ranged upon deck in long coils that ran fore and aft; we tacked repeatedly; and each time the tacks became shorter and more frequent.
"Ready about! Presto! down with the helm,—let fly the head-sheets!" were the orders heard incessantly from Estremera and Manuel Gautier.
The yards slewed round sharply, and the canvas flapped with a sound like the cracking of musketry; at last, the anchor was let go about a half-mile from the shore in thirty fathoms water and the ship swung round head to wind as her courses were brailed up, and the men hurried aloft to hand the topsails and topgallant-sails; so she was soon denuded of her canvas.
When the anchor plunged into the frothy water, making a thousand concentric ripples run from the ship; and when I felt, by the instant strain upon the cable, that she had firm hold of the ground, my heart swelled with unalloyed happiness; for to be in Teneriffe was to be far on the watery high road to my home.