Discovered long, long ago, by an adventurous Portuguese mariner, who bestowed upon it its name, it is a lonely and desolate place, covered with moss and sea-grass, the abode only of sea-elephants and the fur-seal. It was named anew by Captain Gough, of the Richmond, when on his voyage to China in 1731.
After leaving it astern, good fortune seemed to abandon the Princess and her crew.
A series of foul winds that veered round every point of the compass, with heavy gusts and squally weather, beset her, and so cloudy was the sky, that for several days Bartelot and his mate were quite unable to make an observation—i.e., to take the sun's altitude at noon.
In one squall the mizzen-topniast was carried away, being broken right off at the cap, the heel with the fid alone remaining in the top.
"So, friend Morley," said Tom, "if this kind of work and these foul winds continue, we may see the Table Mountain, and have to run into the bay for fresh water."
"At the Cape of Good Hope?"
"Yes. Then if you wish to have a day's run in Lubberland, you may come ashore with me; and who can say," he added, kindly, on perceiving how Ashton's countenance fell at the prospect of fresh delays, "but we may there find a craft bound for the island of Paul and Virginia, and get your hammock swung aboard of her at once?"
One day the weather cleared a little, and the sun broke forth a few minutes before noon.
Bartelot and Morrison betook them to quadrant, sextant, and chart, and found they were within some 300 miles of the Cape of Storms.
After this the sky resumed its sombre and inky hue; the sea was gray, save where the sun shot his beams like a flood of yellow light through a rent in the clouds, and lit the waves below with a golden sheen, long and steadily, about fifteen miles distant on their weather-bow.