CHAPTER VIII.

THE SAIL TO WINDWARD.

Under the interlaced crosses of Great Britain--our brave old union-jack--a very different crew manned that good little ship the _Princess_, of London, which we last left when dropping the giant cone of Tristan d'Acunha astern, and bearing on her voyage towards Tasmania.

Under Tom Bartelot's command, all went well and prosperously, and his ship had fine weather and spanking topsail breezes, after leaving the romantic Isle of Tristan.

Anxious to be useful and to kill time, Morley Ashton had applied himself to seamanship, and, in seeking to master all the mysteries thereof, became the peculiar pupil of old Noah Gawthrop, who confidently undertook "to make a man and a sailor of him, before they saw Wan Demon's Land."

He could soon dip his hands in a bucket of tar without wincing; slush the mast, from the royal-masthead down, without becoming squeamish; he could box the compass, take his trick at the helm, and achieve many clever things, from holding the log-reel upwards to sending down a royal-yard without mistake or blunder, which Noah told him "was one of the prime feats of seamanship, which even the queen on the throne couldn't do."

The first time he accomplished this, was when a squall was coming on. Ben Plank had the fore-royal, Noah the main-royal, and Morley the mizzen.

His spar was certainly the lightest, with a smaller sail, but he had it struck and sent down before the others, greatly to the delight of old Noah, who, with all his ugliness, which was undeniable, was a genuine salt of the old school--a regular British tar, with his slouching shoulders and light gait, swinging arms, and half-closed hands, that were always ready to "tally on" to anything; a comical twinkle in his eye, and who believed in whistling for wind as truly as the Turkish skipper who pours oil upon the sea, in the hope that it may float to Mecca, for the same useful purpose.

Noah bore on his breast, engraved in gunpowder, a little romance of his younger days--a sailor and a girl standing on the sea-shore. In the background (or offing, to speak more correctly) lay a ship, with her topsails loose, hove-apeak to her anchor, while the smoke from a gun--the signal for sea--curled over her quarter. Under the male figure were the initials "N.G.," and under the girl's were--what we won't say, for in them, lay the pet secret of old Noah's honest heart. The ship, however, he often pointed to with pride, saying it was a "lovely pictur' of her Majesty's ship the _Haurora_, of fifty guns, as was--an ugly smoke-jack now, with a screw-propeller in her starn."

The weather was cool, almost cold, at times, and frequently icebergs were in sight, with their white glistening pinnacles standing sharply defined against the sky, and shaded off with pale green or purple tints, that blended with the deep blue of the sea.

Tom Bartelot's cheerful temperament, his songs and his bonhomie, and Morrison's queer legends of Scotland and the sea, together with grave and earnest advice, and confidence in a Providence who ordered all things for the best, had a good effect upon Morley Ashton's spirits, which might have sunk, circumstanced as he was, amid the monotony of a sea voyage, with foreshadowed fears of evil tidings on reaching the Isle of France, after making a tour so circuitous as Tasmania.

Ignorant of the unlooked-for detention of the _Hermione_ at the Canaries, and of the series of foul winds she had encountered, Morley never doubted that now the Bassets must have reached their destination, and been installed in their new home; that Mr. Basset must have entered on his official duties, and if they were accompanied by one so enterprising as Cramply Hawkshaw, it was difficult to foretell how Cupid and Fortune--blind deities both--might reward his perseverance, and thus cast a fatal blight upon the hopes of our hero who, like a poor "pilgrim of the heart," or a knight-errant of old, was traversing the sea from shore to shore in search of a lost love.

One day, as Morley trod the deck to and fro listlessly, he was startled by the unusual, or, at least, unexpected cry of--

"Land, ho!"

Telescope in hand, he sprang up the weather-rigging.

"Land it is, indeed," said Tom Bartelot, shading his eyes with his hand, and peering over the weather-quarter.

"What land, Tom?"

"Diego Alvarez, or Gough's Island. I have been looking out for it all forenoon. Keep her full and by--full and by, lad," he added to the steersman; "keep her closer to the wind--see how that foretopsail shivers."

This was about six bells (_i.e._, 3 P.M.) on a fine, clear afternoon. The hill of Gough's Island arose dim and blue upon their weather-bow.

Discovered long, long ago, by an adventurous Portuguese mariner, who bestowed upon it its name, it is a lonely and desolate place, covered with moss and sea-grass, the abode only of sea-elephants and the fur-seal. It was named anew by Captain Gough, of the _Richmond_, when on his voyage to China in 1731.

After leaving it astern, good fortune seemed to abandon the _Princess_ and her crew.

A series of foul winds that veered round every point of the compass, with heavy gusts and squally weather, beset her, and so cloudy was the sky, that for several days Bartelot and his mate were quite unable to make an observation--_i.e._, to take the sun's altitude at noon.

In one squall the mizzen-topniast was carried away, being broken right off at the cap, the heel with the fid alone remaining in the top.

"So, friend Morley," said Tom, "if this kind of work and these foul winds continue, we may see the Table Mountain, and have to run into the bay for fresh water."

"At the Cape of Good Hope?"

"Yes. Then if you wish to have a day's run in Lubberland, you may come ashore with me; and who can say," he added, kindly, on perceiving how Ashton's countenance fell at the prospect of fresh delays, "but we may there find a craft bound for the island of Paul and Virginia, and get your hammock swung aboard of her at once?"

One day the weather cleared a little, and the sun broke forth a few minutes before noon.

Bartelot and Morrison betook them to quadrant, sextant, and chart, and found they were within some 300 miles of the Cape of Storms.

After this the sky resumed its sombre and inky hue; the sea was gray, save where the sun shot his beams like a flood of yellow light through a rent in the clouds, and lit the waves below with a golden sheen, long and steadily, about fifteen miles distant on their weather-bow.

"Sail, ho!" shouted Ben Plank, who, with some others, was up aloft taking advantage of this bright blink, to get the spare mizzen-topmast shipped, with all its hamper and gearing.

"Where away, Ben?" asked Morley, snatching Tom's telescope from its brass hooks under the companion-hatch.

"There, sir, in that streak of light to windward."

Looming large as coming out of the haze, Morley saw a large, square-rigged vessel, with all her fore-and-aft canvas set, running close-hauled on a different current of wind, which did not as yet affect the _Princess_, and which would probably carry her ahead.

Her canvas was white as snow, and shone like the outspread wings of a swan in the bright gleam of sunshine, and in strong relief against the gray and dusky sky beyond.

She was visible but for a few minutes--so briefly, indeed, that Morrison had not time to run the ensign up to the gaff-peak, when she seemed to dart into the gray obscurity ahead, and to vanish like a phantom that melted into the sky; but though invisible, it was evident that the _Princess_, a faster sailer, would soon leave her far astern.

In that large square-rigged ship, that spanked along on a taut bowline, with the white foam curling under her black bows, and flying over her gilded catheads, how little Morley Ashton imagined that Ethel Basset--the Ethel of his hopes by day and dreams by night, the centre around which all his aspirations and his life itself revolved--was seated side by side with Hawkshaw on one of the quarter-deck seats, watching, through a fifteen-mile lorgnette, or racing-glass, the outline of the _Princess_, whose canvas being all in shadow came blackly out, for a few minutes, from the sombre atmosphere to leeward, and then melted from their view for ever.