"Sail ho!" shouted the cook,
jumping out of his galley; "Sail ho!" shouted a man, throwing back the
slide of the scuttle, to the watch below, who were soon out of their
berths and on deck; and "Sail ho!" shouted the captain down the
companion-way to the passenger in the cabin. Besides the pleasure of
seeing a ship and human beings in so desolate a place, it was
important for us to speak a vessel, to learn whether there was ice
to the eastward, and to ascertain the longitude; for we had no
chronometer, and had been drifting about so long that we had nearly
lost our reckoning, and opportunities for lunar observations are not
frequent or sure in such a place as Cape Horn. For these various
reasons, the excitement in our little community was running high,
and conjectures were made, and everything thought of for which the
captain would hail, when the man aloft sung out- "Another sail, large
on the weather bow!" This was a little odd, but so much the better,
and did not shake our faith in their being sails. At length the man in
the top hailed, and said he believed it was land, after all. "Land
in your eye!" said the mate, who was looking through a telescope;
"they are ice islands, if I can see a hole through a ladder;" and a
few moments showed the mate to be right and all our expectations fled;
and instead of what we most wished to see, we had what we most
dreaded, and what we hoped we had seen the last of.
Pages:
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570