There was an Italian merchantman in port, fitting out for a voyage round the world. They had macaroni on board; and, if they had boiled the huge cargo, they might have girdled the globe as they sailed. They were going to take it to Ceylon and the Philippines, by way of the Suez Canal, and then, come back by the Horn to pick up something for the home market. I wanted a ship; they were not averse to a passenger. Short of ballooning, it seemed the readiest way of giving Civilisation the slip.
We sailed; and, as I just had the honour to inform you, here I am, on a peak in the Pacific, and thirteen thousand miles away from the dome of St. Paul’s—which, as everybody knows, is but a stone’s throw from the Royal Exchange. For distance, I think this will do.
CHAPTER IV.
ADVENTURE.
How I got there, this chapter will tell.
The calm of that passage of the Indian Ocean!—the days of sunlight, a little too ardent, perhaps; the nights of moons—the calm of the spirit, I mean, profounder than the calm of waters. A ship is either a heaven or a hell; and when it is a heaven, why not let that one suffice? The world empty, and no papers—no daily report from the sick bed of civilisation. Who could want more, or less?
Ceylon, with its new faces and its shipman’s bustle, hardly ruffled our repose, and when it did, I shut my eyes. At the Philippines, it was much the same. Both are fully described in the Gazetteers.
Then it was hey! for the next long lap to the Horn, with only a call for water or for wild-fowl, here and there. We were in the Pacific now, for all its bursts of temper how finely named! Should not all oceans, boreal or equinoctial, have the same generic title, for, spite of storm and reef and waterspout, surely their message is peace? Such stretches of proud, self-sufficing silence in between the gusts, such comforting assurance, in deepest whispers, of the final rest! Here, on salt water only, can we set compass for the land voyage. Now and again it thundered, and the rain crashed down like falling walls of water, but always my soul was still. If the worst happened, we should still reach the deepest bottom at last, and find a soft bed in the ooze.
There was magnetic disturbance of a kind, however, in that Italian skipper. He was not too well acquainted with the course, and he was subject to scares about cannibals. He feared that the natives of these parts might prefer him to his macaroni. He had an old Genoese edition of Cook, and he read it as if it were a deliverance of yesterday. Whenever we touched at an island, existence seemed hardly worth having at his price of precaution—scouts, and rear-guard, and main body, all to effect a positive life insurance against some old woman squatting on a mat. Poisoned arrows, again, were his peculiar aversion, and, to keep out of reach of them, he usually directed landing operations through a trumpet from the ship’s side. In vain I argued that one fear ought to preclude the other, and that, if they poisoned him, he would certainly never be fit to eat. Sometimes I tried to reassure him by landing alone, and returning with an escort of friendly natives, and a store of yams. The lesson was lost on him; he attributed my safety to the fact that my joints offered no temptation to the critical eye.
One glorious afternoon, sailing from the south we saw a peak rising sheer from the ocean and huge, for it still might be about thirty miles off. It seemed to taper from a broad and solid base, like the summit of a cathedral. He said, ‘St. Peter’s.’ I said, ‘St. Paul’s.’ As we got nearer, we made out a small island of solid rock, with sharp precipitous sides, plumped down in the blue, and with no neighbours in sight. Add Kensington Gardens to Hyde Park, and you might have its total area. It was covered with verdure and stately trees; but a fringe of white at the water’s edge showed that, in spite of the perfectly calm weather, the surf was boiling against its awful shores.
It looked fruity, though desolate, and I insisted on going ashore for guavas, much to the disgust of the skipper. He offered me dried plums, in dissuasion, from a box fringed with paper lace, but the sight of them only increased my craving for the fresh fruit. At last he let me put off alone, crossing himself as I left the ship’s side; but he had done this so often that it made no particular impression on me. I promised to be back in three hours at the outside, while he stood off and on. There was no anchorage for us, even if there had been time to let go.