"'Perhaps this storm was sent with healing breath,
From distant climes to scourge disease and death;
'Tis ours on Thine unerring laws to trust;
With Thee, great Lord,—whatever is is just!"
"Faith, you are right, sir," said honest Tom Lambourne, touching his tarry hat in respect to the mate, mingled with that piety which, in his own rugged way, a seaman is never without.
CHAPTER X.
I GO ASHORE.
The wind lulled away into a gentle breeze; reef after reef was shaken out until a full spread of canvas once more covered the spars of the Eugenie; and to repair some trifling damages of the night we crept in shore.
As day brightened through clouds half rain, half mist, and wholly gray or obscure, we saw the land looming high and dark. Beyond it in the distance there was a space of vivid light; in the foreground, surf white as snow was breaking on the beach, and high over all, in mid-air, towered the wondrous Peak of Adam, on the eastern side of which the sun (as yet unrisen to us) was shining brightly when we came to anchor in the harbor of Santa Cruz.
We moored in thirty-three fathoms water, about half a mile from the shore, which in most places is steep, with green and lovely slopes rising high above it. As Captain Weston proposed to weigh next morning, he allowed me to go ashore, but sent with me, to be a guide and companion, Tom Lambourne, the tattooed sailor, who had been frequently before at the Grand Canary, and in whom he reposed great trust.
He gave me a courier-bag containing some provisions, a flask of spirits, and a telescope; and thus provided, old Tom and I, with such emotions of pleasure as two newly-escaped schoolboys might feel, landed on the shore, which seemed to heave, sink, and rise under my feet—for after the late storm I still felt that which is termed "the roll of the ship."
It was in this harbor of Santa Cruz that the famous old English Admiral Blake encountered, and within six hours burned and sunk, seven great Spanish galleons, though they were anchored under the protecting cannon of seven forts and a strong castle, in the walls of which some of his shot were shown imbedded for many years after.
I cast longing eyes to the summit of the mighty Peak of Adam. It seemed to rise sheer from the sea, over which, literally piercing the clouds, it towers to the height of more than twelve thousand feet; but the idea of attempting to climb it within so short a space of time as we had to spend on shore never occurred to me; but what a feat it would have been to relate when I returned to Erlesmere!