The reader may recollect that when we were at the Azores, breaking up that Yankee whaling station, we spoke of the currents, in connection with the whales, and other fishes; how, like “reapers and gleaners,” they bore to them the food which was prepared for them in other latitudes. The reader sees, now, how the currents build the coral bank. Every sea-shell, as it secretes the solid matter for its edifice, helps on the movement set on foot by the coral insect.
On the 3d of April, we observed in latitude 2° 11′ S.; our longitude being 26° 02′. The weather was still thick and rainy, and we had fitful gusts of wind, and calms by turns. During the morning watch, the dense clouds lifted for a while, and showed us a fine, tall ship, steering, like ourselves, to the southward. We immediately made sail in chase. The wind was blowing quite fresh from the south-west, at the time, and we gained very rapidly upon the stranger. At twelve o’clock the wind died away, and the heavy rains being renewed, she was entirely shut out from view. We continued the chase all day; now being sure of her, and now being baffled by the ever-shifting clouds, and changing wind and weather. At length, at five P. M., it being no longer safe to trust to contingencies, as night would set in, in another hour, I sent a whale-boat to board, and halt her, although she was still two miles distant. The boarding was successfully accomplished, and just before dark, we could see the stranger’s head turned in our direction. We knew from this circumstance that she was a prize, and hoisting a light, as night set in, to guide the boarding-officer, in an hour or two more she was alongside of us.
The prize proved to be the Louisa Hatch, of Rockland, Maine, from Cardiff, with a cargo of the best Welsh coal, for Point-de-Galle, in the island of Ceylon. The bill of lading required the cargo to be delivered to the “Messageries Imperiales,” steamship company, and there was a certificate on the back of the bill of lading to the effect that the coal belonged to that company, but the certificate was not sworn to by the subscriber. This was tantamount to no evidence at all, and I condemned both ship and cargo as prize of war. Here was quite a windfall—a thousand tons of coal, near the coast of Brazil, where it was worth $17 per ton. But what was I to do with the prize? It would be an interminable job to attempt to supply myself from her, by means of my boats, and hauling the two ships alongside of each other, at sea, was not to be thought of. I was bound to the island of Fernando de Noronha, that being the second rendezvous which I had assigned to my old Scotch collier, the Agrippina, and I resolved to take the Hatch in, with me, to abide contingencies. If the Agrippina should arrive in due time, I could burn the Hatch; if not, the Hatch would supply her place.
This being determined upon, I sent a prize crew on board the captured ship, and directed the prize-master to keep company with me. We overhauled an English bark, the next day, bound from Lisbon to Rio Janeiro, from which we received some late Portuguese newspapers, of no particular interest; and on the day afterward, we chased what we took certainly to be a Yankee whaling schooner, but which we found, upon coming up with her, to be a Portuguese. The schooner was a capital imitation of the “down East” fore-and-after, but upon being boarded, she not only proved to be foreign built, but her master and crew were all Portuguese, nearly as black as negroes, with a regular set of Portuguese papers. What added considerably to the cheat was, that the little craft had heels, and I was some two or three hours in coming up with her.
The weather was so thick for the next two or three days, that it was necessary to keep the prize very close to me, to prevent losing sight of her. At night I showed her a light from my peak, and we jogged along within speaking distance of each other. Having had no observation for fixing the position of my ship, during the prevalence of this thick weather, and the direction and velocity of the currents being somewhat uncertain, I was quite anxious lest I should drift past the island I was in quest of, and fall upon some of the foul ground lying between it and the coast of Brazil. On the 9th of April, the sun showed himself for an hour or two, near noon, and I got latitude and longitude, and found that we were in the great equatorial current, as I had supposed, setting us about S. W. by W. at the rate of a knot and a half per hour. I now got up steam, and taking the prize in tow, for it was nearly calm, with but a few cats’-paws playing upon the water, made the best of my way toward Fernando de Noronha.
At daylight, the next morning, we made the famous peak, some forty miles distant, and at half-past two P. M. we came to anchor in thirteen fathoms water. The prize, having been cast off as we ran in, anchored near us. The Agrippina had not arrived; nor did I ever see her afterward. Captain Bullock had duly dispatched her, but the worthless old Scotch master made it a point not to find me, and having sold his coal in some port or other, I have forgotten where, returned to England with a cock-and-a-bull story, to account for his failure. The fact is, the old fellow had become alarmed lest he should fall into the hands of the Yankees. It was fortunate that I had not burned the Louisa Hatch.
CHAPTER XLIII.
FERNANDO DE NORONHA—ITS FAMOUS PEAK—IS A PENAL SETTLEMENT OF BRAZIL—A VISIT FROM THE GOVERNOR’S AMBASSADORS—A VISIT TO THE GOVERNOR IN RETURN—THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE ISLAND—CAPTURE OF THE LAFAYETTE AND THE KATE CORY—BURNING OF THE TWO LAST SHIPS, WITH THE LOUISA HATCH—PRISONERS SENT TO PERNAMBUCO—THE CLOUD RING, AND THE RAINY AND DRY SEASONS.