This stopped the fellow’s grumbling at once; and Captain Brown, after proceeding aloft to have a look for himself and see how far the island was off, gave directions for having the ship’s course altered, letting her fall off a point or two from the wind.
“I guess I wer standin’ a bit too much to the northward,” he said to Fritz, who was waiting on the poop, longing to ask him a thousand questions as to when they would get in, and where they would land, and so on; “but thet don’t matter much, as we are well to win’ard, an’ ken fetch the land as we like.”
The island, which at first appeared like a sort of low-lying cloud on the horizon, was now plainly perceptible, a faint mountain peak being noticeable, just rising in the centre of the dark patch of haze.
“Is it far off?” asked Fritz.
“’Bout fifty mile or so, I sh’u’d think, mister,” answered the skipper—“thet is more or less, as the air down below the line is clearer than it is north, so folks ken see further, I guess. I don’t kinder think it’s more’n fifty mile, though, sou’-sou’-west o’ whar the shep is now.”
“Fifty miles!” repeated Fritz, somewhat disconcerted by the announcement; for, he would not have thought the object, which all could now see from the deck, more than half that distance away. “Why, we’ll never get there to-day!”
“Won’t we?” said the skipper. “Thet’s all you know ’bout it, mister. The Pilot’s Bride ’ll walk over thet little bit o’ water like a race hoss, an’ ’ill arrive at Tristan ’fore dinner time, you bet!”
The skipper’s prognostication as to the time of their arrival did not turn out quite correct, but Fritz’s anxiety was allayed by their reaching the place the same night; for, the mountain peak, which had been noticed above the haze that hung over the lower part of the island, began to rise higher and higher as the ship approached, until its sharp ridges could be plainly seen beneath a covering of snow that enveloped the upper cone and which changed its colour from glistening white to a bright pink hue as it became lit up by the rays of the setting sun—the latter dipping beneath the western horizon at the same instant that the Pilot’s Bride cast anchor in a shallow bay some little distance off the land, close to Herald Point, where the English settlement on the island lies.