"Weel, I care na if I spin the yarn before the watch is called," said the boatswain; "but first, here is to the gude saut water, and a' that live on't!" and he poured down his capacious throat the last of the ale, and after wiping his mouth three or four times with the cuff of his gaberdine, spitting twice through an open port, and fixing his eyes on the beam overhead, he thrust his hands into his pockets, placed his logs on the deck, his back against a gun-carriage, and began thus:—
"Ye maun ken, messmates, that after leaving the Gut o' Gibraltar, we were beating westward against a head-wind. Our craft was the Peggie o' Pittenweem, hameward bound from Barcelona, for Leith, wi' a mixed cargo o' wine and oil, fruit, cork, and hides, and Sir Andrew, the admiral, who was then but a sma' merchant-skipper, had ten brass culverins in her, forbye some braw pateraroes along her gunnel, for the behoof o' the heathen Moors o' Barbary if they daured to meddle wi' us. After losing sight o' the Castle of Gibraltar, and the chapels of our Lady of Europe and our Lady of Africa, that stand on ilka shore, the wind veered round to the north-west, and we were obliged to bear right away before it for well nigh a week, till we had mony fears o' being blawn round Cape None, or getting into the downhill currents, that bear ships away to the southern pole; or, what is waur, being blown off the earth a'thegether: for the warld is round, ye ken, just like my bonnet," continued this ancient mariner, balancing the article named in his hands; "and flat, as ye may see, for the sun dips down to port at night, and then comes up to starboard in the morning, rising at the edge, like this penny piece. Weel, ye wad flee owre its margin if ye stood on owre long wi' your canvas set, and so be launched out into space like a hoodie craw. The ship o' auld Sir Patrick Spens was ance a' owre but the waist, when the current swept her back again, and then she hauled her wind. At last we saw the high peak o' the Fortunate Isles rising frae the sea, vomiting fire and brimstone, its side covered in one place wi' glistening snow, in another wi' a forest o' green laurel bushes, wherein the yellow birds o' the Canaries built their nests in the warm sunshine.
"The gale deid awa, and the sails flapped against the masts and rattlins; the sea became like glass, and there was sae little wind that the Peggie wouldna answer her helm; but it mattered little, for Sir Andrew and auld Gibbie o' Crail had been in these seas before, and we kent our whereabouts. We were within less than half a mile o' the shore, but in fifty fathoms water by the line. There was nae current, and the ship lay like a log, wi' her decks blistering in the sun. Sir Andrew thought it wad be a gude time to get fresh water, for our last pint was in the scuttlebutt; sae we hove up twelve casks, the crews o' the yawl and pinnace were piped awa, and cheerily we shipped our oars, and pulled for the shore, as I weel mind, singing merrily the auld ballad,—
"'Oh, who is he has dune this deed,
And tauld the king o' me,
And sent us oot at this time o' year,
To sail upon the sea?'
Every man o' us had a durk and gude braid Banffshire whinger in his belt, forbye ten that were armed wi' crossbows, for Sir Andrew kent of auld that the Guanchos o' the Fortunate Isles were unchancey chields to warsle wi'. Gibbie o' Crail, wha had served wi' the Spanish buccaneers under the Captain Bocca Roxa (he whom Barton slew off Cape Ortegal), tauld us that they had once landed there, and put a hail village to fire and sword, and that wi' his ain hand he had killed the prince o' the place by a slash across the nose wi' his boarding-axe.
"We landed at a sma' bit creek among black rocks, covered wi' ashes, dust, and pumice-stane; but among them grew the green sugar-cane, the olive, and the bonnie cotton-tree. The wee birds wi' their gouden wings flew aboot frae branch to branch, singing in the bright sunshine. A' the sweets o' summer were there, and they wiled mony o' our messmates awa frae the wark o' filling and bunging the water-casks to stray in the laurel woods that grow on the base o' that tremendous peak, which is five leagues nigh frae the water-line to the Deil's Cauldron on the tap, where the red brimstone burns day and night. Ay, Jamie Gair, ye think muckle o' the craigs o' Dunnotter; but I wish ye saw Adam's Peak, in the Fortunate Isles!
"The fresh water was delightful as milk, and the grapes that hung owre the pumice-stane rocks were sweeter than heather honey; and sae, despite Sir Andrew's orders, twa or three o' us, including Sandie Mathieson, a Leith man, strayed a mile or mair into the island, flinging our braid bonnets after the gouden birds, eating grapes and wild honey in some places, tumbling knee-deep in soft sulphur and spongy pumice-stane, until we found the entrance o' a cave, for a' the warld like ane o' the weems in the Fife, and, sailor-like, we scrambled in to see what was there, and my faith, messmates, we saw a sicht to mind o'!
"In that cave were mair than twa hundred deid corpses, a rankit up in rows against the walls; for it was a burial place for the Guanchos, who, instead of putting their deid like Christians into a grave, bathe and parboil them in butter and wild lavender, black gum and wild sage—for sae Father Zuill told me; and after drying them in the sunshine in summer, and the cauld breezes in winter, they sow them up in goatskins, and then the mummies are hard as a ship's figure-head, yea, and harder, for they will never decay; and there they stood, twa hundred or mair, wi' their tanned visages and sichtless eyen, their hair and beards all brushed and plaited, and as if they yet lived; and oh, there was an awesome grin on their shrivelled maws!
"It was a sight even for a sailor to scunner at, and we glowered at them for awhile, ilk ane o' us ashamed to be the first to put up his helm and be off. At last Gibbie o' Crail, an auld sea-horse, that feared nocht, and had mair owre a gude dram under his hatches, began to examine them, in the hope of finding some braw goud or trinket; and solemnly Mathieson and I warned him to let the deid corpses alane; but he laughed, and tumbled them owre like nine-pins. There was ane, a great stark and brawny corpse, wi' a lang scar across its nose, and twa precious stanes, like emeralds, glinting where its eyen should be. Gibbie said, wi' an oath, that he was sure it was the prince o' the Guanchos, whom he had slain twenty years before, and wi' a dab o' his jocketeleg, picked out one of the emeralds. But lo!
"At that moment the jaws opened, and there came frae them a yell that shook the dust frae the cavern roof; that seemed to mak the corpses start, and made Gibbie spring ten feet awa; and then we turned and fled, wi' every hair on our heids bristling; and without ever daring ance to look astern, we cam' plunging doon the side o' the peak, through the laurel bushes and owre the sulphur banks, till we reached the creek, where the yawl and the pinnace, wi' the last o' the water-casks, were about putting off, and mair deid than alive wi' terror, we sprang on board. We were just in time to reach the boats and get a rope's-ending for disobeying orders; for though Sir Andrew was but a skipper then, as I tauld ye, he kept a tight hand owre his crew."