Chapter Twenty Six.
After the Ione had left Cephalonia, she commenced her intricate passage among the innumerable isles and islets of the Grecian Archipelago, towards Lissa, in the neighbourhood of which his new friend Teodoro Vassilato, the captain of the Ypsilante, had appointed a rendezvous with Captain Fleetwood.
On first starting, they were favoured with a fair breeze; but no sooner did they get among the labyrinthine mazes of the islands, than a foul wind set in, and delayed them in a manner which sorely tried Fleetwood’s impatient spirit. Any one who has cruised among those islands will know the difficulty of the navigation, and the necessity for constant watchfulness. Besides the thousand islands and islets, there are, in every direction, rocks of all sizes, some just below the water, others rising above it to various heights; and although there are no regular tides, there are powerful and very variable currents, and many a ship has been cast away in consequence of them—the master, by his calculations, fancying himself often well free of the danger, on which he has been in reality running headlong.
The Ione had stood to the southward, and had tacked again to the northward, with the island of Milo blue and distant on her weather beam, when, just as the sun, in his full radiance of glory, was rising over the land, the look-out ahead hailed that there were breakers on the starboard bow.
“How far do you make them?” asked Linton, who was the officer of the watch, as he went forward to examine them himself with his telescope. “By Jove! there is a mass of black rocks there; and I believe there is somebody waving to us on them,” he exclaimed. “Here, Raby, take my glass, and see what you can make out.”
“I can make it out clearly, sir,” replied the midshipman. “There are a number of people on them, and they have a sheet or blanket, or something of that sort, made fast to a boathook or small spar, and they are waving it to attract our attention.”
“They have been cast away, then, depend on it, and we must go and see what we can do for them,” said Linton. “Run down and tell the captain; and, as you come back, rouse out the master, and ask him how close we may go to the rocks.”
The captain and master, as well as all the officers, were soon on deck, and the brig was looking well up towards the rocks, within a few cables’ length of which, to leeward, the pilot said they might venture.
There was a good deal of sea running, for it had been blowing very hard the previous day; but the wind had gone down considerably, and Captain Fleetwood expressed his opinion that there would not be much difficulty in getting the people off the rocks, provided they could find an approach to them on the lee side; but on getting nearer, the rock appeared to be of so small an extent, that the waves curled round it, and made it almost as dangerous to near it on one side as on the other.