He had heard of ships, too, beating up the gulf of Finland against
a head wind, and having a ship heave in sight astern, overhaul and
pass them, with as fair a wind as could blow, and all studding-sails
out, and find she was from Finland.
"Oh ho!" said he; "I've seen too much of them men to want to see 'em
'board a ship. If they can't have their own way, they'll play the
d - -l with you."
As I still doubted, he said he would leave it to John, who was the
oldest seaman aboard, and would know, if anybody did. John, to be
sure, was the oldest, and at the same time the most ignorant, man
in the ship; but I consented to have him called. The cook stated
the matter to him, and John, as I anticipated, sided with the cook,
and said that he himself had been in a ship where they had a head
wind for a fortnight, and the captain found out at last that one
of the men, whom he had had some hard words with a short time before,
was a Fin, and immediately told him if he didn't stop the head wind
he would shut him down in the fore peak, and would not give him
anything to eat. The Fin held out for a day and a half, when he
could not stand it any longer, and did something or other which
brought the wind round again, and they let him up.
"There," said the cook, "what do you think o' dat?"
I told him I had no doubt it was true, and that it would have been
odd if the wind had not changed in fifteen days, Fin or no Fin.
"Oh," says he, "go 'way! You think, 'cause you been to college,
you know better than anybody. You know better than them as 'as
seen it with their own eyes. You wait till you've been to sea as
long as I have, and you'll know."
CHAPTER VII
JUAN FERNANDEZ - THE PACIFIC
We continued sailing along with a fair wind and fine weather until
Tuesday, Nov. 25th, when at daylight we saw the island of
Juan Fernandez, directly ahead, rising like a deep blue cloud out
of the sea. We were then probably nearly seventy miles from it;
and so high and so blue did it appear, that I mistook it for a cloud,
resting over the island, and looked for the island under it, until it
gradually turned to a deader and greener color, and I could mark the
inequalities upon its surface. At length we could distinguish trees
and rocks; and by the afternoon, this beautiful island lay fairly
before us, and we directed our course to the only harbor.
