When catering, the price of each article is settled by negotiation, and it is definitely bought, as it is met with from time to time in our perambulation, on condition that it shall be paid for as it is passed into the boat on departure—cash on delivery. Much other stuff, though unbought, is also brought down to the boat in the hope of sale at the last moment. This too is generally taken as well, because going cheaply, and also to avoid causing disappointment.
Everybody having been paid, and the already laden boat now pretty well cluttered-up with an unexpected additional cargo of chickens, eggs, fruit, shells, and sundry ethnological acquisitions, up goes the shoulder-of-mutton, the helmsman ships his twiddling-stick, and, in a few moments, the water is purring beneath our lee gunnel as the little craft slithers through the closely set wavelets of land-sheltered water. Long, narrow, and ballasted, these boats are very fast and are given the last ounce of wind pressure they can stand up to. It seemed to us, however, that her crew wished to show what they could do with her as, halliard and sheet in hand, they lifted the lee gunnel from moment to moment, just sufficiently to prevent her filling, but they did so with an easy nonchalance that told that they were finished boat sailors.
A very few minutes saw us “once more aboard the lugger.” We had left Mana at noon, and eight bells were striking as the staysail-sheet-tackle scraped to leu’ard along the hairless belly of its horse; we had explored an island, seen a good deal of its people and their culture, and had revictualled ship, all within four hours, yet without hurry!
Towards sundown we passed out into the Atlantic, through the Crooked Island Passage; at 8.45 p.m. the Light that marks the Passage dipped over our taffrail, and we turned in with that peace of mind which is the portion of those whose ship is clear of all land.
This day, April the 19th, Gibb’s Hill Lighthouse, Bermuda, bore N. 42° E., distant 767 miles; it took us eleven days to do it.
April the 20th.—The sargasso weed formed floating islands sometimes many acres in extent; when one considers the marine fauna that centres round a piece of floating wreckage in tropical seas, some idea can be formed of the wealth of life associated with this vast sudd. Our patent log could no longer be towed.
BERMUDAS
The Bermudas are a group of a hundred islands, most of which are, however, bare rocks. They were discovered in the beginning of the 16th century by Juan Bermudez, a Spaniard.
In 1609 attention was drawn to them by Sir George Somers, who was shipwrecked there on his way to Virginia, and found them “the most plentiful place that ever I came to for fish, hogs and fowl.” Fifty emigrants were sent out in 1612. Moore, a ship’s carpenter, was the first governor. He established his headquarters at St. George’s. Later a more central position was needed, and the town of Hamilton was laid out, and became the capital in 1815. The American War brought the islands into notice from a naval point of view, and in 1810 a dockyard was begun on Ireland Island, thousands of convicts being sent out from England for its construction.