However, "A Miss Is As Good
As A Mile;" A Saying Which Sailors Very Often Have Occasion To
Use.
An escape is always a joke on board ship.
A man would be
ridiculed who should make a serious matter of it. A sailor knows
too well that his life hangs upon a thread, to wish to be always
reminded of it; so, if a man has an escape, he keeps it to himself,
or makes a joke of it. I have often known a man's life to be saved
by an instant of time, or by the merest chance, - the swinging of
a rope, - and no notice taken of it. One of our boys, when off
Cape Horn, reefing topsails of a dark night, and when there were
no boats to be lowered away, and where, if a man fell overboard he
must be left behind, - lost his hold of the reef-point, slipped from
the foot-rope, and would have been in the water in a moment, when
the man who was next to him on the yard caught him by the collar
of his jacket, and hauled him up upon the yard, with - "Hold on,
another time, you young monkey, and be d - - d to you!" - and that
was all that was heard about it.
Sunday, August 7th. Lat. 25° 59' S., long. 27° 0' W. Spoke the
English bark Mary-Catherine, from Bahia, bound to Calcutta.
This was the first sail we had fallen in with, and the first
time we had seen a human form or heard the human voice, except of
our own number, for nearly a hundred days. The very yo-ho-ing of
the sailors at the ropes sounded sociably upon the ear. She was
an old, damaged-looking craft, with a high poop and top-gallant
forecastle, and sawed off square, stem and stern, like a true
English "tea-wagon," and with a run like a sugar-box. She had
studding-sails out alow and aloft, with a light but steady breeze,
and her captain said he could not get more than four knots out of
her and thought he should have a long passage. We were going six
on an easy bowline.
The next day, about three P. M., passed a large corvette-built
ship, close upon the wind, with royals and skysails set fore
and aft, under English colors. She was standing south-by-east,
probably bound round Cape Horn. She had men in her tops, and black
mast-heads; heavily sparred, with sails cut to a t, and other marks
of a man-of-war. She sailed well, and presented a fine appearance;
the proud, aristocratic-looking banner of St. George, the cross in
a blood-red field, waving from the mizen. We probably were as fine
a sight, with our studding-sails spread far out beyond the ship
on either side, and rising in a pyramid to royal studding-sails
and sky-sails, burying the hull in canvas, and looking like what
the whale-men on the Banks, under their stump top-gallant masts,
call "a Cape Horn-er under a cloud of sail."
Friday, August 12th. At daylight made the island of Trinidad,
situated in lat. 20° 28' S., long. 29° 08' W. At twelve M.,
it bore N. W. 1/2 N., distant twenty-seven miles. It was a
beautiful day, the sea hardly ruffled by the light trades,
and the island looking like a small blue mound rising from
a field of glass.
Such a fair and peaceful-looking spot is said to have been, for a
long time, the resort of a band of pirates, who ravaged the tropical
seas.
Thursday, August 18th. At three P. M., made the island of Fernando
Naronha, lying in lat. 3° 55' S., long. 32° 35' W.; and between
twelve o'clock Friday night and one o'clock Saturday morning,
crossed the equator, for the fourth time since leaving Boston,
in long. 35° W.; having been twenty-seven days from Staten
Land - a distance, by the courses we had made, of more than
four thousand miles.
We were now to the northward of the line, and every day added to
our latitude. The Magellan Clouds, the last sign of South latitude,
were sunk in the horizon, and the north star, the Great Bear,
and the familiar signs of northern latitudes, were rising in
the heavens.
Next to seeing land, there is no sight which makes one realize
more that he is drawing near home, than to see the same heavens,
under which he was born, shining at night over his head. The
weather was extremely hot, with the usual tropical alternations
of a scorching sun and squalls of rain; yet not a word was said
in complaint of the heat, for we all remembered that only three or
four weeks before we would have given nearly our all to have been
where we now were. We had plenty of water, too, which we caught by
spreading an awning, with shot thrown in to make hollows. These
rain squalls came up in the manner usual between the tropics. - A
clear sky; burning, vertical sun; work going lazily on, and men
about decks with nothing but duck trowsers, checked shirts, and
straw hats; the ship moving as lazily through the water; the man
at the helm resting against the wheel, with his hat drawn over
his eyes; the captain below, taking an afternoon nap; the passenger
leaning over the taffrail, watching a dolphin following slowly in
our wake; the sailmaker mending an old topsail on the lee side of
the quarter-deck; the carpenter working at his bench, in the waist;
the boys making sinnet; the spun-yarn winch whizzing round and round,
and the men walking slowly fore and aft with their yarns. - A
cloud rises to windward, looking a little black; the sky-sails are
brailed down; the captain puts his head out of the companion-way,
looks at the cloud, comes up, and begins to walk the deck.
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