CHAPTER XXIX.

DISCOVER LAND.

The following are the names of those who escaped with me in the longboat:

Marc Hislop, mate, Thomas Lambourne, second mate, Francis Probart, carpenter, John Thomas Burnett, ship's cook, Edward Carlton, Henry Warren, Hugh Chute, Matthew Hipkin, William Wilkins, usually called "Boy Bill."

As the morning light came in, there appeared to the south-westward a vast bank of mist or cloud which shrouded half the sky, and assumed a variety of beautiful tints when the rising sun shone on it--yellow and saffron, deepening into purple and blue as its masses changed in the contrary currents of air; while to the eastward, in the quarter of the sun's ascension, the rippling ocean shone as if covered with tremulous and glittering plates of mingled gold and green.

A ration of rum-and-water in equal proportions was now served round to each man--the leathern cover of a bung being our only cup, as we had omitted a drinking vessel among our hastily-collected stores. Half of a biscuit given to each constituted our breakfast, and with hope dawning with the day in our hearts, we shipped our oars and pulled stoutly toward the west.

Tom Lambourne steered: the sea was smooth, the wind light, and in our favor; so ere long the mast was shipped, and a sail hoisted to lessen the labor of the rowers.

We were anxious for the dense bank of purple cloud to clear away, that we might have a more extensive view of the horizon, and perhaps discover a sail, but the envious vapor seemed to darken and to roll before us, or rather before the wind that bore us after it.

About mid-day, when we were pausing on our oars, breathless and panting with heat, drenched with perspiration, which ran into our eyes and trickled down our breasts; and when visions of iced water and bitter beer came tantalizingly to memory--for sea and sky were equally hot, as the former seemed to welter and become oily under the blaze of the latter--a sharp-winged bird that skimmed past us suddenly caught the hollow eye of Hislop, who, I thought, was sleeping.

"Do you see that bird, Tom," he exclaimed, half starting up from the stern-sheets; "it is a man-of-war bird!"

"What then, sir?"

"We must be near land," replied the mate.

"Land!" reiterated every one in the boat, their voices expressing joy, surprise, or incredulity.

"Is it Brazil?" asked Tattooed Tom, with amazement in his singular face.

"I do not think so," said Hislop, passing a hand wearily and reflectively over his pale forehead. "Brazil--it is impossible, by the last reckoning I made before that Spaniard wounded me. But Heaven only knows where we may have drifted to since then!"

"The wind and currents may have taken us many hundred miles from where the last observation was made," added Carlton.

"But I am convinced that we are near land--look at the sea-wrack that passes us now; and we must be out of the track of the Gulfweed," continued the mate with confidence.

"And may I never see the Nore again, if _that ain't land now_, looming right a-head through the fog-bank!" exclaimed Tom, starting up, and shading his eyes from the sun with both hands as he peered intently westward.

As the reader may imagine, we all gazed anxiously enough in the direction indicated by the old seaman, and a swell of rapture rose in the breasts of all when something in the form of a headland or bluff could be distinctly seen right ahead, bearing due west, about seven miles distant, standing out from the bank of vapor, or looming like a darker shadow _within_ it.

This appearance never changed in outline, but remained stationary, and every moment became more defined and confirmed.

Exclamations of joy now broke from us, and we congratulated each other on making the land so soon and so unexpectedly, without enduring the miseries which so frequently fall to the lot of those who are cast away, as we were, in an open boat at sea.

"But what land is it?" was the general inquiry.

Another allowance of grog was served round; the oars were again shipped, we bent our backs and breasts sturdily to the task, and at every stroke almost lifted the boat clean out of the shining water in our eagerness to reach this suddenly discovered shore.

This had such an effect upon Marc Hislop, that though weak and sinking as he had been, he begged that he might be allowed to steer the boat a little way, while Tom Lambourne kept a bright look-out ahead, to watch for any ripple or surf that might indicate the locality of a treacherous coral reef, as such might prove dangerous to a large and heavily laden craft like ours.

With every stroke of the bending oars the land seemed to rise higher and more high.

Ere long we could make out its form clearly. It was bold, rocky, and mountainous, and as the mist dispersed or rose upward into mid air, we could see the dark brown of the bluff, and some trees of strange aspect, with drooping foliage on its summit, were clearly defined, as they stood between us and the blue sky beyond.

We soon made out distinctly that it was a large island. The shore was somewhat level to the north-east, and in the centre towered an almost perpendicular mountain of vast height, the sides of which seemed covered with furze, gorse, and brushwood.

Elsewhere its dusky and copper-colored rocks started sheer out of the sea, whose waters formed a zone of snow-white surf around their base.

We headed the boat to the north-east, where the shore seemed more approachable, and as we pulled along it, but keeping fully three miles off, when the land opened, we saw high crags, deep ravines, shady woods and dells in the interior, though no appearance of houses, of wigwams, or of inhabitants.

Many speculations were now ventured as to what island this might be.

"May it not be land that has never before been discovered?" I suggested with a glow of pleasure, in the anticipation of being among the first to tread an unexplored and hitherto unknown shore. Hislop smiled and shook his head.

Henry Warren, who had been an old South-sea whaler, suggested that it was the island Grando, but Hislop assured us that this was impossible. In the first place, by the position of the sun, he could see that we were not so far south as the parallel of Port San Giorgio on the Brazilian shore; and in the second, the existence of such an island was doubted.

"Can it be Trinidad Island--Tristan da Cunha, or the Rocks of Martin Vaz?" asked Tom Lambourne.

"If the latter," replied Hislop, "we should now be in south latitude 20° 27', but this land in no way answers to the aspect of the Martin Vaz Rocks."

"Did you ever see them, sir?" asked several.

"No; but they are described by La Perouse as appearing like _five_ distinct headlands." After pausing and pondering for a moment, he suddenly added, with confidence, "It is the Island of Alphonso de Albuquerque!"

"How do you know?" I inquired.

"By the appearance of that cliff, and the mountain inland."

"You have been here before?" asked Probart.

"Never; but I know it to be Alphonso by that cliff on the north, and the mountain too, which were particularly described in a Spanish book I lost in the _Eugenie_. The mountain is a peak which the author says resembles--did any of you ever see a place like it before?"

"It is as like Tenny Reef from the port of Santa Cruz, as one egg is like another!" exclaimed Tom Lambourne.

"Exactly, Tom, that is what the Spanish author likens it to, though he does not use the simile. So if it is the island of Alphonso, we are now somewhere in south latitude 37° 6', and west longitude 12° 2'. Pull southward, my lads, the shore opens a bit beyond that headland. We shall find a smooth beach probably within the bight yonder."

"Anyway we're not in pilot's water," added Tom, laughing; "give way, mates--stretch out."

We pulled with a hearty will, and ere long were close in shore--so close that our larboard oars seemed almost to touch the rocks which rose sheer from the sea, like mighty cyclopean walls, but covered with the greenest moss; they overhung and overshadowed the dark, deep water that washed their base, and as they shielded us from the fierce noonday heat of the sun, we found the partial coolness refreshing and delightful.

As Hislop had foreseen, on rounding the bluff, the shore receded inward, and through a line of white surf, like that which boils over the bar at a river's mouth, we dashed into a beautiful little bay, the sandy beach of which was shaded by groves of bright green trees.

Still we saw no trace of inhabitants; but selecting a small creek which was almost concealed by trees that grew, like mangroves, close to the edge of the water, we ran our boat in, moored her securely, where none were likely to find her save ourselves, and then all sprang joyously ashore--at least all save Hislop and Billy the cabin boy, who remained to attend him, while we went on an exploring expedition in search of natives or whatever might turn up next.