“No,” I answered; “the belt of smooth water is growing narrower fast; but the sea breeze does not blow into the channel yet. Now it has reached the entrance.”
“Ah, den make sail, Senior Capitan; fill de main-topsail.” We stood in, the scene becoming more and more magnificent as we approached the land.
The fresh green shores of this glorious island lay before us, fringed with white surf, as the everlasting ocean in its approach to it gradually changed its dark blue colour, as the water shoaled, into a bright joyous green under the blazing sun, as if in sympathy with the genius of the fair land, before it tumbled at his feet its gently swelling billows, in shaking thunders on the reefs and rocky face of the coast, against which they were driven up in clouds, the incense of their sacrifice. The undulating hills in the vicinity were all, either cleared, and covered with the greenest verdure that imagination can picture, over which strayed large herds of cattle, or with forests of gigantic trees, from amongst which, every now and then, peeped out some palm thatched mountain settlement, with its small thread of blue smoke floating up into the calm clear morning air, while the blue hills in the distance rose higher and higher, and more and more blue, and dreamy, and indistinct, until their rugged summits could not be distinguished from the clouds through the glimmering hot haze of the tropics.
“By the mark seven,” sung out the leadsman in the starboard chains. “Quarter less three,” responded he in the larboard, showing that the inequalities of the surface at the bottom of the sea, even in the breadth of the ship, were at least as abrupt as those presented above water by the sides of the natural canal into which we were now running. By this time, on our right hand, we were within pistol shot of the Moro, where the channel is not above fifty yards across; indeed there is a chain, made fast to a rock on the opposite side, that can be hove up by a capstan until it is level with the water, so as to constitute an insurmountable obstacle to any attempt to force an entrance in time of war. As we stood in, the golden flag of Spain rose slowly on the staff at the Water Battery, and Cast its large sleepy folds abroad in the breeze; but, instead of floating over mailclad men, or Spanish soldiers in warlike array, three poor devils of half naked mulattoes stuck their heads out of an embrasure under its shadow. “Senor Capitan,” they shouted, ‘una Botella de Roma, por el honor del pais.’ We were mighty close upon leaving the bones of the old ship here, by the by; for at the very instant of entering the harbour’s mouth, the land wind checked us off, and very nearly hove us broadside on upon the rocks below the castle, against which the swell was breaking in thunder.
“Let go the anchor,” sung out the captain.
“All gone, sir,” promptly responded the boatswain from the forecastle. And as he spoke, we struck once, twice, and very heavily the third time. But the breeze coming in strong, we fetched away again; and as the cable was promptly cut, we got safely off. However, on weighing the anchor afterwards, we found the water had been so shoal under the bows, that the ship, when she stranded, had struck it, and broken the stock short off by the ring. The only laughable part of the story consisted in the old cook, an Irishman, with one leg and half an eye, scrambling out of the galley nearly naked, in his trowsers, shirt, and greasy nightcap, and sprawling on all fours after two tubsful of yams, which the third thump had capsized all over the deck. “Oh you scurvy-looking tief,” said he, eying the pilot; “if it was running us ashore you were set on, why the blazes couldn’t ye wait until the yams, were in the copper, bad luck to ye—and them all scraped too! I do believe, if they even had been taties, it would have been all the same to you.” We stood on, the channel narrowing still more the rocks rising to a height of at least five hundred feet from the water’s edge, as sharply and precipitously as if they had only yesterday been split asunder; the splintered projections and pinnacles on one side, having each their corresponding fissures and indentations on the other, as if the hand of a giant could have closed them together again.
Noble trees shot out in all directions wherever they could find a little earth and a crevice to hold on by, almost meeting overhead in several places, and alive with all kinds of birds and beasts incidental to the climate; parrots of all sorts, great and small, clomb, and hung, and fluttered amongst the branches; and pigeons of numberless varieties; and the glancing woodpecker, with his small hammer like tap, tap, tap; and the West India nightingale, and humming birds of all hues; while cranes, black, white, and grey, frightened from their fishing-stations, stalked and peeped about, as awkwardly as a warrant-officer in his long skirted coat on a Sunday; while whole flocks of ducks flew across the mastheads and through the rigging; and the dragon-like guanas, and lizards of many kinds, disported themselves amongst the branches, not lazily or loathsomely, as we, who have only seen a lizard in our cold climate, are apt to picture, but alert, and quick as lightning, their colours changing with the changing light or the hues of the objects to which they clung, becoming literally in one respect portions of the landscape.
And then the dark, transparent crystal depth of the pure waters under foot, reflecting all nature so steadily and distinctly, that in the hollows, where the overhanging foliage of the laurel-like bushes darkened the scene, you could not for your life tell where the elements met, so blended were earth and sea.
“Starboard,” said I. I had now come on deck. “Starboard, or the main topgallant-masthead will befoul of the limb of that tree. Foretop, there—lie out on the larboard fore-yardarm, and be ready to shove her off, if she sheers too close.”
“Let go the anchor,” struck in the first lieutenant.