We had escaped it by a miracle. Our ship’s head had been pointed for it as neatly as the muzzle of a musket at the object to be shot at. In another three minutes our bows would have been into it, and the ship have ground herself away from the bows aft, as you shut up the tubes of a telescope!
Our captain seemed to take fright at this experience, and whilst the loom of the mighty mass was still visible on the lee quarter, orders were given for all hands to turn out and heave the ship to. Nor was way got upon her again till the weather cleared, and even then for several days our progress was exceedingly stealthy, the order of the time being that whenever it came on thick the ship was to be hove-to. It was weary, desperate work, and every hand on board the ship soon grew to yearn, with almost shipwrecked longings, for the blue skies and the trade-winds of the South Atlantic.
CHAPTER X.
HE SIGHTS A WRECK.
But at last came a day when the meridian of Staten Island was passed under our counter; and when eight bells had been made, the ship’s course was altered, and we were once more heading for the sun with a strong wind on the beam, the ocean working in long sapphire lines of creaming billows, the ship leaning down under a maintopgallant sail, with a single reef in the topsail under it, and the sailors going about their work with cheerful countenances; for this northward course made us all feel that we were really and truly homeward bound at last.
It was thought that our passage would be a smart one, as good a run as any on record, for though, to be sure, we had been detained a bit off the Horn by the frequent heaving to of the ship, yet we had traversed the long stretch of the South Pacific very briskly, whilst for a long eight days now there blew a strong, steady beam wind that drove us through it at an average of two hundred and fifty miles in the twenty-four hours. With less weight in the breeze we should have done better still. We could never show more than a maintopgallant sail to it, and the high seas were by no means helpful to the heels of the ship. Yet Cape Horn was speedily a long way astern of us; the horrible weather of it was forgotten as pain is. Every night, stars which had become familiar to us were sinking in the south, and new constellations soaring out of the horizon over the bows. It was delightful to handle the ropes, and find them supple as coir instead of stiff as iron bars, to pick up the sails, and feel them soft again to the touch instead of that hardness of sheets of steel which they gathered to them in the frosty parallels. The sun shone with a warmth that was every day increasing in ardency; the dry decks sparkled crisply like the white firm sand of the sea-beach. The live-stock grew gay and hearty with the Atlantic temperature: the cocks crew cheerily, the hens cackled with vigour, the sheep bleated with voices which filled our salted, weather-toughened heads with visions of green meadows, of fields enamelled with daisies, of hedges full of nosegays, and of twinkling green branches melodious with birds.
We slipped into the south-east trade wind, and bore away for the equator under fore-topmast studding-sail.
