“Any fishing here?”
“No; it’s a sandy bottom. Try if you like.”
Lines were got out, baited and thrown over. How very true the description of fishing: “a long string, with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.” Not a bite rewarded our efforts, although we sat with the lines till long after breakfast. We threw over an empty match box. It bobbed up and down beside us for a long time till a little puff of wind blew us away from it, and then ceased so that the boom might continue its flopping, as it toyed with the main-sheet. The conversation drifted from the Captain General to the facility with which mutinies could be fomented on sailing ships when they were becalmed. Then, naturally, from mutiny to slavery, and the condition of Carolina was discussed, and the wisdom of the remark made by the Governor of the northern half of that State to the Governor of the southern half—that it “was a long time between drinks.” The idea caught on like a fish-hook to a trouser leg, but it took Mr. Baston, who was in charge of the locker, some time to find the corkscrew. But when he did find it—ah!
Fitful little puffs of wind tightened the sails at fitful intervals, and sent the waters sparkling behind us, as the sun began to sink towards the west. As sundown approached, a steady but light breeze began to waft us slowly forward. The light clouds of the western horizon were painted in bright golden hues, and the sun sank beneath the waters a glaring ball of fire amid the living flame into which he had touched the burnished clouds which overhung him.
“Plenty of wind by and bye,” remarked the skipper, as our sympathies again went out to the slaves of Carolina. Under the influence of the rising breeze our boat danced merrily through the waves until Nicholas, who had mounted the masthead, said he could hear the distant roll of the breakers as they broke over the coral-capped reefs of the Abrolhos, and we must lay the boat to for the night. The boat was thrown up into the wind, and everything made safe as the new moon sank beneath the horizon, and under the splashing music of the waters we rolled into our rugs and were lulled into that soft slumber which was only disturbed by the hardness of the deck on which we lay. An occasional “Ough—h—h” or “Ach—h—” smote dreamily on our ears, telling us that some, at least, of our party did not trouble particularly whether the ducks came home or the cows laid.
Thus was our Christmas spent. “Coffee!” shouted Miles at about five o’clock, and we roused up to find the boat slightly careening under a pleasant breeze, which was blowing us along at about six or seven knots. We had drifted a good way back and northerly during the night, and it was not till near ten o’clock, before we sighted Goss Island, the most easterly of the middle group of the Abrolhos—a low, sandy spit, rising only a few feet above the surrounding waters. Our unaccustomed eyes could not distinguish it from the crested foam of a rolling wave till long after our watchful skipper pointed it out to us, and told us he was on the look-out for a beacon-pole which was erected on its shore.
Passing this island at a respectful distance, so as to keep well away from its outlying reefs, the Wallaby and Pigeon Islands hove in view, and, entering the channel which lay between them, sailed up to a sheltered cove, which afforded good anchorage, and dropped anchor at about noon, having been thirty-six on a journey which with a moderate breeze would have occupied about eight.