With every new type of vessel there comes a fresh aspect of the romance of the sea.
Our new type will revive or open a new chapter of sea life. No more black coal and smoke, but a clean, silent engine, petroleum plus sails; sails must come back; look at our run down here, half sails, half motor; the modern steam-whaler could not have done it, even the old sailing flyers could not either.
I think we could have converted any disbeliever in the romance of the sea if they’d have come aboard last night, when Henriksen and I had our southern charts out, studying the lonely islands away down there.
Visiting the islands of the world alone would fill books of sea romance; think of them, the thousands there are, some of them never visited. Those in the south of the Antarctic edge are described in the Admiralty books we have in such terse, dry words as these: “Of no interest geographically”; “Dangerous”; “Only of interest to sealers”! “Provisions for ship-wrecked crews were deposited by H.M. (? ship) in the year ⸺” before the Flood! And they say: “There are only kergulen cabbages—a red root like a carrot” on one, and wild pigs on another; and on another the beach is covered with innumerable sea-elephants and penguins. Ghost of Robinson Crusoe, what else can a man want? Why, even these islands, the Azores, so close to home, how the prospect of seeing them fills us with eagerness! What will the hills be like, and the people, and the fruit, and the wine, and birds, and flowers, and fish! We long to see them with the utmost impatience now that only a narrow strip of rough blue sea lies between us and them, to-night we may fetch its lights—to-morrow we will see the land in full sun for a certainty.
CHAPTER XVII
A new land, new to us, only a faint tint above the horizon, but land it is, we know; merely an outline of faint soft blue-grey mountains over the sparkling morning sea.
All night we waited and watched for its lights, but not till daylight did we have the pleasure of seeing “land”! Land rising out of the waters after even a week at sea is very gratifying, like food after hunger, like health after illness.
We have made a good land fall—we find ourselves heading straight to the centre of San Miguel, the largest island of the Azores group, within a few yards of the point we aimed at from Belfast; thanks to three skilled navigators, for we would have passed the islands miles to W. if we had not corrected compass by sun bearings, a procedure which demands very scientific knowledge of navigation.
So it is a case of a shave to-day, and getting out thin land clothing, with an occasional turn on deck between the operations to gloat on the blue hazy mountains.