CHAPTER IV
A ROGUE - TROUBLE ON BOARD - "LAND HO!" - POMPERO - CAPE HORN
After speaking the Carolina, on the 21st August, nothing occurred
to break the monotony of our life until
Friday, September 5th, when we saw a sail on our weather (starboard)
beam. She proved to be a brig under English colors, and passing
under our stern, reported herself as forty-nine days from Buenos Ayres,
bound to Liverpool. Before she had passed us, "sail ho!" was cried again,
and we made another sail, far on our weather bow, and steering athwart our
hawse. She passed out of hail, but we made her out to be an hermaphrodite
brig, with Brazilian colors in her main rigging. By her course, she must
have been bound from Brazil to the south of Europe, probably Portugal.
Sunday, Sept. 7th. Fell in with the north-east trade winds.
This morning we caught our first dolphin, which I was very eager to see.
I was disappointed in the colors of this fish when dying. They were
certainly very beautiful, but not equal to what has been said of them.
They are too indistinct. To do the fish justice, there is nothing more
beautiful than the dolphin when swimming a few feet below the surface,
on a bright day. It is the most elegantly formed, and also the quickest
fish, in salt water; and the rays of the sun striking upon it, in its
rapid and changing motions, reflected from the water, make it look
like a stray beam from a rainbow.
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