"Hands prepare to shorten sail—stand by the anchor!" were now the orders of Bartelot.
The canvas was clewed up preparatory to being handed, and the light warm breeze from the wooded shore swept through the bared rigging and spars.
Already the seamen were hurrying up aloft; the small bower anchor was let go with a plunge; hoarsely rushed the chain-cable as it vanished from the deck through the hawse-hole; and now the Princess rode at her moorings in eight-fathom water, in the noble harbour of Rio de Janeiro—the region where eternal spring and endless summer reign.
And now, leaving Morley Ashton to push his way among the skippers and merchant-officers in the Rua Direta, and all its branching streets, seeking a mode of transit to the Isle of France, while Tom Bartelot sends his crew ashore, and procures a copper-coloured gang to "break bulk" and start his cargo, we shall return to Ethel Basset, whom we left five chapters back, with her quondam lover, on board the Hermione, of London.
CHAPTER XIX.
ETHEL AMID THE ATLANTIC ISLES.
Unlike the Princess, which, as we have shown, accomplished a most prosperous voyage, the Hermione encountered a series of head-winds and hard gales; she had several of her spars carried away, and even before skirting the Bay of Biscay, had to put in requisition her spare foretopmast and topsail yards.
This was considered by all on board a singularly unlucky beginning, as Captain Phillips said; all the more so, that a pair of sparrows had built their nest in the forecrosstrees, during the time that the ship lay in the London-dock, and had finished it, too, undeterred by all the noise and bustle around them.
This was considered so good an omen, that the event was actually recorded in the ship's log; biscuit crumbs were scattered in the tops for their support, and orders were given not to disturb the birds, if possible, so they went to sea with the ship. So the female sat upon her eggs, while the male hopped and twittered about the top and below in search of the scattered crumbs; but in the first tough breeze, as some ill-disposed fellow—supposed to be Pedro Barradas—was going aloft at night, the nest was destroyed, and flung with its two little eggs on the deck; the poor birds were swept away to sea, and hence, as Mr. Quail affirmed, came the ill-luck, the head-winds and hard gales, encountered by the ship.
After passing the Madeira Isles her foremast was carried away, and at the very time when Tom Bartelot was informing Morley Ashton that she should be somewhere off St. Helena, the Hermione was creeping slowly under a jury foremast into the harbour of Teguise (the chief town of Lanzarota, one of the Canary Isles), to refit; and there the dockyard appliances were so small and so poor, that she was delayed for more than a fortnight.