From Atlantic to Pacific, and the strange happenings
that intervened
Chapter VII headpiece
CHAPTER VII
From Atlantic to Pacific, and the strange happenings
that intervened
"Look out for the Caribbean Sea toward December," was another axiom of our five-masted-schooner friend at Las Palmas, but he proved no less fallible over the passage from Barbados to Colon than he had concerning the Atlantic. In fact, I am thinking of in future asking advice of weather prophets in order to anticipate the reverse.
A spanking wind on the quarter, with mainsail and squaresail set, and a mighty following sea that flung the dream ship before it in a series of exhilarating swoops, brought us within sight of land in seven days, a distance of twelve hundred miles. But what land? For a time we were at a loss. Comparing it with the chart and descriptions in "sailing directions" revealed nothing. It was a low-lying, mist-enshrouded, sinister-looking land, and we sailed along its coast for a day and a night before we could tell whether we had passed Colon or hit the coast to the eastward.
Ultimately, a lighthouse gave us the clue, and we found that owing to a current that has the unpleasant knack of running at anything from a half to three knots we were still fifty miles from our objective, so we headed for sea and hove to until daylight.
All night as we lay rolling in a heavy swell steamers passed us by, floating palaces of light, and with the dawn we joined the procession of giants making for the Panama Canal.
We wished to go through the canal? Very well; a measurer would be sent off to decide our tonnage, and we must be ready to take the pilot aboard at five o'clock the next morning.