It is not this spectacle, however, that brings forth a simultaneous shout from everyone on board, but [177] ]the appearance, as one berg gives a half-turn, of an object, hardly two hundred yards from our jibboom end, standing there, amidst all the wild commotion, steadfast, rugged and grim, with tall breakers curling up against its ice-surrounded, dark red cliffs, and falling back in showers of foam, showing milky-white in the morning gloom.
It is land, surely! And, surely, we have seen those forbidding, snow-capped precipices before. It is the island of the mirage, substantial enough this time, and in another ten minutes we shall be dashed to atoms against its surf-encircled base.
The sight had a wondrous effect, and men who seemed incapable a minute before of stirring their stiffened limbs now hopped up the rigging like goats, and scampered along the deck with the top-sail halliards as if racing for a wager, in obedience to the order to cast off and make sail.
‘Hard a port!’ and the Boadicea’s poop is splashed with spray from rocks and ice as she turns slowly from a jagged, honeycombed promontory, whilst her late consort goes headlong to destruction on its iron teeth.
It is still blowing hard; but our captain is more than satisfied; and, under everything she can carry, the Boadicea rushes, like a frightened stag, fast away, northwards and eastwards, out of those dismal seas of ice and fog, snow, and unknown islands, a very nightmare of navigation, into which one merchant skipper, at least, will never willingly venture again.
[178]
]However, we, after all, perhaps, set our course on a higher parallel than anyone had done since Ross in ’41, followed the outline of a southern continent, whose volcanoes flamed to heaven from a lifeless, desolate land of ice and snow. And, as some compensation for our trouble and dangers, till we sighted the south end of Tasmania, we never had occasion to touch a rope, so steadily and strongly blew the fair wind.
‘Seventy-five days—a rattlin’ good passage!’ exclaimed our Port Jackson pilot; and when he asked what had become of our bulwarks, and why the cuddy doors wouldn’t shut, we simply told him we had been ‘Too far south.’
[179]
]THE MISSION TO DINGO CREEK.
An Apostolical Sketch.
‘Bad work, this!’ exclaimed the Bishop of B—— to one of a recent consignment of curates. ‘Bad work this, in the North!