huge unwieldy piece of wood brought on board, when the zoologists got a famous lesson in conchology, from the shell-fish that had fastened on it, and the sailors chuckled with delight at finding some occupation in cutting up the vegetable colossus into sizeable pieces.
At 6.30 P.M. on the 29th Sept., we crossed the equator for the sixth time in 161° 57′ E., and in the Southern hemisphere found we still had to contend with calms and contrary winds.
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Crept in this petty pace from day to day,"
without our making any perceptible progress. When we had reached 4° 15′ S., and 160° 24′ E., a circumstance occurred to break the uniformity of our existence, as according to the charts we were using of the Hydrographic Institute of England for the year 1856,[197] we must have been quite close to some coral reefs, known as Simpson's Island. But although by our observations, after due allowance made for currents, we were, about 4 P.M. of the 5th October, off the N.W. extremity of the islands, there was no land of any sort visible on either side even from the royals, and we accordingly had to conjecture that Captain Simpson, after whom these islands were named, must have sighted one of the Le Maire or Tasman group, which lie 40 miles further to the west and 10 miles further to the north, and had, owing to
false reckoning, imagined to have discovered a new cluster; for on the following day at 6 P.M., when by our course, which was south-easterly, the island ought to have lain W.N.W. ten miles distant, not a vestige of land could be descried from the deck, nor even from the mast-head, so that we felt positive the Simpson group were neither at the spot laid in the general chart of the English Admiralty, nor within ten miles of it in either an easterly or westerly direction.[198]
A few days after this interlude, an incident of a very peculiar character took place, which excited universal attention, and more especially greatly exercised the souls of the superstitious. The occasion was nothing less than a dread whisper that there was a ghost on board. From time to time, in fact, dull rumbling sounds were said to be audible, which some professed to hear above them, others below, some in the fore part of the ship, others aft. It was a noise like the roll of thunder, or of cannon-balls that had got loose. The shot-racks were carefully examined, but everything there appeared to be in its usual order. The sound was repeated the following days, when there was hanging over us a sky as black and murky, accompanied by heavy pelts of rain,
as though all the clouds of heaven were lavishing their contents upon us. All on board indulged in every possible hypothesis that could explain these sounds, and exhausted themselves in conjectures. Some maintained that one of the volcanoes of the Solomon group, in the vicinity of which we were at the time, was in a state of activity, and was the cause of these sub-marine thunders; but the sailors, sailor-like, insisted it was ghosts playing pranks, and the attendants refused any longer to remain in the cock-pit, alleging it was haunted! However, when a second examination was made of the shot-racks, it was found that no fewer than eighty thirty-pound iron shots had broken through the wooden bulk-head of the ordnance room, whence they had made their way into the bread-depôt, as it was called, and on its metal floor had produced the resonance peculiar to the impact of metal against metal. The mystery was at once solved in the most natural manner, and the "each-particular-hair-on-end" ghost stories which during the last few days had been flying from mouth to mouth, forthwith dropped. Thus might many a "marvel" prove to be the result of some very ordinary cause, if people would but take the trouble to examine its natural causes, instead of ascribing everything which they cannot understand or explain to some supernatural influence.
At noon of the 7th October, in 6° 37′ S., 161° 8′ E., we were, according to chart, 12 miles distant from Bradley's Reef. But although both seamen and midshipmen were
stationed at the mast-heads, in order the more readily to make it out with the advantage of such an elevation, there was not the slightest trace perceptible of rocks or shoals, and we sailed without obstruction over the very spot at which, according to the English charts, Bradley's Reef rises from the waves. This reef was discovered by Captain Hunter in May, 1791, two days after he had passed Stewart's Island (Sikayana), and is doubly dangerous in a climate where the sea rarely runs so high as to make it easily observed by the surf breaking over it. According to our observations, collated with those of Captain Cheyne, Bradley's Reef must lie in about 160° 48′ E.[199]
The same day about 7 P.M., when we were about 120 miles distant from the N.W. part of the Solomon group, there suddenly and altogether unexpectedly blazed forth in the western sky an immense and most brilliant comet, with a yellow, rather bright nucleus, and an enormous tail, sweeping over some 15° or 20°. It was about 8° or 10° above the horizon when we observed it.