Chapter Twenty.

Chapter Twenty.Arrival at Tristan d’Acunha.“This air prime, now ain’t it?” said the skipper to Fritz, as the ship, with her nose pointing almost south, was driving away before the north-west wind and making some ten knots an hour.“Yes, she’s going along all right,” replied he; adding frankly, however, “I should like it all the better, though, if the vessel didn’t roll about so much.”“Roll?” exclaimed Captain Brown indignantly; “call this rolling? Why, Jee-rusalem, she only gives a kinder bit of a lurch now an’ ag’in! I thought you would hev got your sea-legs on by this time.”Fritz could only bow to this statement, of course; but, all due deference to the skipper, nevertheless, thePilot’s Bridedid roll, and roll most unmercifully, too.She was just like a huge porpoise wallowing in the water!It may be remembered that she had sailed from port light, with a pretty considerable freeboard; and now, with the wind almost right aft, so that she had no lateral pressure to steady her—as would have been the case if the breeze had been abeam or on her quarter—she listed first to port and then to starboard, with the “send” of the sea, as regularly as the swing of a clock’s pendulum. Really, the oscillation made it almost as impossible for Fritz to move about as if the ship had been contending with all the powers of the elements in a heavy storm, whereas the skipper said she was only “going easy,” with a fair wind!Why, the “breeze” had not lasted a day, before nearly every particle of glass and crockery-ware in the steward’s cabin was smashed to atoms; while preventer stays had to be rove to save the masts from parting company.Roll, eh? She did roll—roll with a vengeance!Fortunately, this did not last long; the wind shifting round to the north-east, after a three days’ spell from the west, which brought the ship on a bow line, steering, as she was, south-east and by south. Had not this change come when it did, “the old tub would hev rolled her bottom out,” as Mr Slater, the whilom deck hand, “guessed” one morning to Fritz, while the crew were engaged in washing decks.Of course, the brothers themselves had many a chat together while the voyage lasted, talking over their plans as well as chatting about the different scenes and circumstances surrounding the endless panorama of sea and sky, sky and sea, now daily unfolded before them.Naturally—to Fritz, at least—all was new; and it was deeply interesting to him to notice the alteration in the aspect of the heavens which each night produced as the ship ran to the southward. The north star had disappeared with its pointers, as well as other familiar stellar bodies belonging to higher latitudes; but, a new and more brilliant constellation had risen up in the sky within his new range of view, which each evening became more and more distinct.This was the Southern Cross, as it is called, consisting of four stars, three of the first magnitude and the fourth somewhat smaller, arranged in the form of an oblique crucifix, pointing across the firmament “athwartship-like,” as the skipper explained one night-watch when the brothers were looking out together. Only once in the year, Captain Brown said, is this cross perfectly perpendicular towards the zenith; for, as it circles round our planet, it reverses its position, finally turning upside-down.When thePilot’s Brideceased to roll and began to make steady way towards Tristan, with the wind from the northward and eastwards on her beam, she ran along steadily on one tack, with hardly a lurch, covering some two hundred miles a day as regularly as the log was hove and the sun taken at noon.All this time, no sight could now have been more glorious than the heavens presented each night after sunset. The myriads upon myriads of stars that then shone out with startling brilliancy was something amazing; and the puzzle to Fritz was, how astronomers could name and place all these “lesser lights”—following their movements from day to day and year’s end to year’s end, without an error of calculation, so that they could tell the precise spot in the firmament where to find them at any hour they might wish!“And yet,” said Fritz, musingly, “these wise men are puzzled sometimes.”“Nary a doubt o’ thet,” responded the skipper, who, in spite of his rough manner and somewhat uncultivated language, thought more deeply than many would have given him credit for; “I guess, mister, all the book-larnin’ in the world won’t give us an insight inter the workin’s o’ providence!”“No,” said Fritz. “The study of the infinite makes all our puny efforts at probing into the mysteries of nature and analysing the motives of nature’s God appear mean and contemptible, even to ourselves.”“Thet’s a fact,” assented the skipper. “Look thaar, now! Don’t thet sky-e, now, take the gildin’ off yer bunkum phi-loserphy an’ tall talkin’ ’bout this system an’ thet—ain’t thet sight above worth more’n a bushel o’ words, I reckon, hey?”Fritz gazed upwards in the direction the other pointed, right over the port quarter of the ship and where the starry expanse of the stellar world stretched out in all its beauty.Eastwards, near the constellation Scorpio, was the Southern Cross, which had first attracted their attention, the figurative crucifix of the heavens; while the “scorpion,” itself, upreared its head aloft, surmounted by a brilliant diadem of stars that twinkled and scintillated in flashes of light, like a row of gems of the first water—the body of the fabled animal being marked out in fine curves, in which fancy could trace its general proportions, half-way down the heavens. In a more southerly direction, still, the parallel stars of the twin heroes Castor and Pollux could be seen, shining out with full lustre in a sky that was beautifully, intensely blue, conveying a sense of depths beyond depths of azure beyond; and, as the wondering lookers gazed and the night deepened, fresh myriads of stars appeared to come forth and swell the heavenly phalanx, although the greater lights still maintained their glittering superiority, Jupiter emitting an effulgence of radiant beams from his throne at the zenith, while the Milky Way powdered the great celestial dome with a smoke wreath of starlets that circled across the firmament in crescent fashion, like a sort of triumphal arch of flashing diamonds which the angels could tread in their missions from heaven to earth, or the feet of those translated to the realms of the blest!“Grand, ain’t it?” repeated the skipper.But Fritz said nothing; his thoughts went deeper than words.A day or two after this, the north-east wind suddenly failed and a dead calm set in, lasting for twenty-four hours. This circumstance did not please Captain Brown much, for he hardly knew what to make of it; however, after a day and night of stagnation, the breeze returned again, although, in the interim of lull, it took it into its head to shift round more to the southwards, causing thePilot’s Brideto run close-hauled.On the evening before this change of wind, and while the calm yet continued, the sea presented what seemed to Fritz—and Eric too, for he had never seen such a sight before, although he had much better acquaintance with the wonders of the deep than his brother—a most extraordinary scene of phosphorescent display, the strange effect of it being almost magical.The sun had set early and the moon did not rise till late; but, as soon as the orb of day had disappeared below water, the horizon all round became nearly as black as ink, without any after-glow, as had invariably been noticed at previous sunsets. The whole sky was dark and pitchy like; only a few stars showing themselves momentarily for a while high up towards the zenith, although they were soon hidden by the mantle of sombre cloud that enveloped the heavens everywhere.Meanwhile, the entire surface of the sea, in every direction as far as their eyes could reach, seemed as if covered with a coating of frosted silver; and, all around the ship, at the water-line, there appeared a brilliant illumination, as if from a row of gas jets or like the footlights in front of the stage of a theatre. Where the sea, too, was broken into foam by the slight motion of the ship, it also gave out the same appearance; and the faint wake astern was as bright as the track usually lit up by the moon or rising sun across the ocean, resembling a pathway of light yellow gold.When Fritz first saw the reflection, on looking over the side of the ship, he thought that something had happened down below, and that the appearance he noticed was caused by different lights, streaming through the portholes and scuttles.“What are they doing with all those lanterns in the hold?” he asked Eric in surprise.The sailor lad laughed.“No ship lanterns,” said he, “are at work here. They say that this queer look of the sea is occasioned by thousands of little insects that float on the surface and which are like the fireflies of the tropics. Don’t you recollect reading about them?”“But then, this light is so continuous,” replied Fritz. “It is bright as far away as we can see.”“Yes, I suppose the shoal of insects stretches onward for miles; still, it is only when it is dark like this, with the sky overcast, that you can see them. At least, that is what I’ve been told, for I never saw such a display before.”“You’re ’bout right, my lad,” observed Captain Brown, who had come over to leeward, where the brothers were. “I forgit what they call the durned things; but, they’re as thick as muskitters on the Florida coast. You’ll see ’em all clear away as soon as the moon shows a streak, though. They can’t stand her candlelight, you bet!”It was as the skipper said. Although the illumination of the sea was so vivid that it lit up the ship’s sails with flashes as the water was stirred, it died away when the moon shone out. Then, too, the sky lightened all round and the clouds cleared away before the approaching wind which had thus apparently heralded its coming.Nothing occurred after this to break the monotony of the voyage, beyond a school of whales being noticed blowing in the distance away to the windward one day, about a week after the change of wind.“There she spouts!” called out a man who was up in the fore cross-trees, overhauling some of the running gear; but the hail only occasioned a little temporary excitement, for the animals were much too far off for pursuit and, besides, Captain Brown wished to land the brothers and clear his ship of all cargo before going whaling on his own account.This consummation, however, was not long distant; for some sixteen days or so after they had turned their backs on the South American coast, the skipper told Fritz he hoped to be at Tristan on the morrow. This was when he and the captain were having their usual quarter-deck walk in the first watch, the evening of the same day on which they passed the school of whales.“Yes, sirree,” he said, “we’ve run down to 36 degrees South latitude, I guess, an’ wer ’bout 13 degrees West when I took the sun at noon; so I kalkerlate, if the wind don’t fail an’ the shep keeps on goin’ as she is, which is bootiful, I reckon, why we’ll fetch Tristan nigh on breakfus-time to-morrow,—yes, sir!”“Indeed!” exclaimed Fritz. He did not think they were anywhere near the place yet; for, although it was more than two months since they had left Narraganset Bay, the ship appeared to sail so sluggishly and the voyage to be so tedious, that he would not have been surprised to hear some day from the captain that they would not reach their destination until somewhere about Christmas time!“Ya-as, really, I guess so, mister. No doubt you’re a bit flustered at gettin’ thaar so soon; but thePilot’s Bride’ssich a powerful clipper thet we’ve kinder raced here, an’ arrove afore we wer due, I reckon!”The skipper innocently took Fritz’s expression of surprise to be a compliment to the ship’s sailing powers; and so Fritz would not undeceive him by telling him his real opinion about the vessel. It would have been cruel to try and weaken his belief in the lubberly old whaler, every piece of timber in whose hull he loved with a fatherly affection almost equal to that with which he regarded his daughter Celia.Fritz therefore limited himself to an expression of delight at the speedy termination of their voyage, without hazarding any comment on thePilot’s Bride’sprogress; by which means he avoided either hurting the old skipper’s feelings or telling an untruth, which he would otherwise have had to do.He was undoubtedly glad to have advanced so far in their undertaking; for, once arrived at Tristan d’Acunha, a few more days would see them landed on Inaccessible Island, when, he and Eric would really begin their crusoe life of seal-catching and “making the best” of it, in solitary state.Wasn’t he up on deck early next morning, turning out of his bunk as soon as he heard the first mate calling the captain at four bells—although, when he got there, he found Eric had preceded him, he having charge of the morning watch and having been up two hours before himself!However, neither of the brothers had much the advantage of the other; for, up to breakfast time, Tristan had not been sighted.But, about noon, “a change came o’er the spirit of their dream!”Captain Brown had just gone below to his cabin to get his sextant in order to take the sun, while Fritz, to quiet his impatience, had sat down on the top of the cuddy skylight with a book in his hand, which he was pretending to read so as to cheat himself, as it were; when, suddenly, there came a shout from a man whom the skipper had ordered to be placed on the look-out forward—a shout that rang through the ship.“Land ho!”Fritz dropped his book on to the deck at once and Eric sprang up into the mizzen rigging, hurriedly scrambling up the ratlins to the masthead, whence he would have a better point of observation; the skipper meanwhile racing up the companion way with his sextant in his hand.“Land—where away?” he sang out, hailing the man on the fore cross-trees.“Dead away to leeward, two points off the beam,” was the answer at once returned by the man on the look-out, who happened, strangely enough, to be Fritz’s whilom acquaintance, the “deck hand!”“Are you sure?” hailed the captain again to make certain.“As sure as there’s claws on a Rocky Mountain b’ar,” replied the man in a tone of voice that showed he was a bit nettled at his judgment being questioned; for he next added, quite loud enough for all to hear, “I guess I oughter know land when I see it. I ain’t a child put out to dry nurse, I ain’t!”“There, thet’ll do; stow thet palaver!” said Captain Brown sharply, “else you’ll find thet if Rocky Mountain b’ars hev claws, they ken use ’em, an’ hug with a prutty good grip of their own too, when they mean bizness, I guess, Nat Slater; so, you’d better quiet down an’ keep thet sass o’ yourn for some un else!”This stopped the fellow’s grumbling at once; and Captain Brown, after proceeding aloft to have a look for himself and see how far the island was off, gave directions for having the ship’s course altered, letting her fall off a point or two from the wind.“I guess I wer standin’ a bit too much to the northward,” he said to Fritz, who was waiting on the poop, longing to ask him a thousand questions as to when they would get in, and where they would land, and so on; “but thet don’t matter much, as we are well to win’ard, an’ ken fetch the land as we like.”The island, which at first appeared like a sort of low-lying cloud on the horizon, was now plainly perceptible, a faint mountain peak being noticeable, just rising in the centre of the dark patch of haze.“Is it far off?” asked Fritz.“’Bout fifty mile or so, I sh’u’d think, mister,” answered the skipper—“thet is more or less, as the air down below the line is clearer than it is north, so folks ken see further, I guess. I don’t kinder think it’s more’n fifty mile, though, sou’-sou’-west o’ whar the shep is now.”“Fifty miles!” repeated Fritz, somewhat disconcerted by the announcement; for, he would not have thought the object, which all could now see from the deck, more than half that distance away. “Why, we’ll never get there to-day!”“Won’t we?” said the skipper. “Thet’s all you know ’bout it, mister. ThePilot’s Bride’ll walk over thet little bit o’ water like a race hoss, an’ ’ill arrive at Tristan ’fore dinner time, you bet!”The skipper’s prognostication as to the time of their arrival did not turn out quite correct, but Fritz’s anxiety was allayed by their reaching the place the same night; for, the mountain peak, which had been noticed above the haze that hung over the lower part of the island, began to rise higher and higher as the ship approached, until its sharp ridges could be plainly seen beneath a covering of snow that enveloped the upper cone and which changed its colour from glistening white to a bright pink hue as it became lit up by the rays of the setting sun—the latter dipping beneath the western horizon at the same instant that thePilot’s Bridecast anchor in a shallow bay some little distance off the land, close to Herald Point, where the English settlement on the island lies.

“This air prime, now ain’t it?” said the skipper to Fritz, as the ship, with her nose pointing almost south, was driving away before the north-west wind and making some ten knots an hour.

“Yes, she’s going along all right,” replied he; adding frankly, however, “I should like it all the better, though, if the vessel didn’t roll about so much.”

“Roll?” exclaimed Captain Brown indignantly; “call this rolling? Why, Jee-rusalem, she only gives a kinder bit of a lurch now an’ ag’in! I thought you would hev got your sea-legs on by this time.”

Fritz could only bow to this statement, of course; but, all due deference to the skipper, nevertheless, thePilot’s Bridedid roll, and roll most unmercifully, too.

She was just like a huge porpoise wallowing in the water!

It may be remembered that she had sailed from port light, with a pretty considerable freeboard; and now, with the wind almost right aft, so that she had no lateral pressure to steady her—as would have been the case if the breeze had been abeam or on her quarter—she listed first to port and then to starboard, with the “send” of the sea, as regularly as the swing of a clock’s pendulum. Really, the oscillation made it almost as impossible for Fritz to move about as if the ship had been contending with all the powers of the elements in a heavy storm, whereas the skipper said she was only “going easy,” with a fair wind!

Why, the “breeze” had not lasted a day, before nearly every particle of glass and crockery-ware in the steward’s cabin was smashed to atoms; while preventer stays had to be rove to save the masts from parting company.

Roll, eh? She did roll—roll with a vengeance!

Fortunately, this did not last long; the wind shifting round to the north-east, after a three days’ spell from the west, which brought the ship on a bow line, steering, as she was, south-east and by south. Had not this change come when it did, “the old tub would hev rolled her bottom out,” as Mr Slater, the whilom deck hand, “guessed” one morning to Fritz, while the crew were engaged in washing decks.

Of course, the brothers themselves had many a chat together while the voyage lasted, talking over their plans as well as chatting about the different scenes and circumstances surrounding the endless panorama of sea and sky, sky and sea, now daily unfolded before them.

Naturally—to Fritz, at least—all was new; and it was deeply interesting to him to notice the alteration in the aspect of the heavens which each night produced as the ship ran to the southward. The north star had disappeared with its pointers, as well as other familiar stellar bodies belonging to higher latitudes; but, a new and more brilliant constellation had risen up in the sky within his new range of view, which each evening became more and more distinct.

This was the Southern Cross, as it is called, consisting of four stars, three of the first magnitude and the fourth somewhat smaller, arranged in the form of an oblique crucifix, pointing across the firmament “athwartship-like,” as the skipper explained one night-watch when the brothers were looking out together. Only once in the year, Captain Brown said, is this cross perfectly perpendicular towards the zenith; for, as it circles round our planet, it reverses its position, finally turning upside-down.

When thePilot’s Brideceased to roll and began to make steady way towards Tristan, with the wind from the northward and eastwards on her beam, she ran along steadily on one tack, with hardly a lurch, covering some two hundred miles a day as regularly as the log was hove and the sun taken at noon.

All this time, no sight could now have been more glorious than the heavens presented each night after sunset. The myriads upon myriads of stars that then shone out with startling brilliancy was something amazing; and the puzzle to Fritz was, how astronomers could name and place all these “lesser lights”—following their movements from day to day and year’s end to year’s end, without an error of calculation, so that they could tell the precise spot in the firmament where to find them at any hour they might wish!

“And yet,” said Fritz, musingly, “these wise men are puzzled sometimes.”

“Nary a doubt o’ thet,” responded the skipper, who, in spite of his rough manner and somewhat uncultivated language, thought more deeply than many would have given him credit for; “I guess, mister, all the book-larnin’ in the world won’t give us an insight inter the workin’s o’ providence!”

“No,” said Fritz. “The study of the infinite makes all our puny efforts at probing into the mysteries of nature and analysing the motives of nature’s God appear mean and contemptible, even to ourselves.”

“Thet’s a fact,” assented the skipper. “Look thaar, now! Don’t thet sky-e, now, take the gildin’ off yer bunkum phi-loserphy an’ tall talkin’ ’bout this system an’ thet—ain’t thet sight above worth more’n a bushel o’ words, I reckon, hey?”

Fritz gazed upwards in the direction the other pointed, right over the port quarter of the ship and where the starry expanse of the stellar world stretched out in all its beauty.

Eastwards, near the constellation Scorpio, was the Southern Cross, which had first attracted their attention, the figurative crucifix of the heavens; while the “scorpion,” itself, upreared its head aloft, surmounted by a brilliant diadem of stars that twinkled and scintillated in flashes of light, like a row of gems of the first water—the body of the fabled animal being marked out in fine curves, in which fancy could trace its general proportions, half-way down the heavens. In a more southerly direction, still, the parallel stars of the twin heroes Castor and Pollux could be seen, shining out with full lustre in a sky that was beautifully, intensely blue, conveying a sense of depths beyond depths of azure beyond; and, as the wondering lookers gazed and the night deepened, fresh myriads of stars appeared to come forth and swell the heavenly phalanx, although the greater lights still maintained their glittering superiority, Jupiter emitting an effulgence of radiant beams from his throne at the zenith, while the Milky Way powdered the great celestial dome with a smoke wreath of starlets that circled across the firmament in crescent fashion, like a sort of triumphal arch of flashing diamonds which the angels could tread in their missions from heaven to earth, or the feet of those translated to the realms of the blest!

“Grand, ain’t it?” repeated the skipper.

But Fritz said nothing; his thoughts went deeper than words.

A day or two after this, the north-east wind suddenly failed and a dead calm set in, lasting for twenty-four hours. This circumstance did not please Captain Brown much, for he hardly knew what to make of it; however, after a day and night of stagnation, the breeze returned again, although, in the interim of lull, it took it into its head to shift round more to the southwards, causing thePilot’s Brideto run close-hauled.

On the evening before this change of wind, and while the calm yet continued, the sea presented what seemed to Fritz—and Eric too, for he had never seen such a sight before, although he had much better acquaintance with the wonders of the deep than his brother—a most extraordinary scene of phosphorescent display, the strange effect of it being almost magical.

The sun had set early and the moon did not rise till late; but, as soon as the orb of day had disappeared below water, the horizon all round became nearly as black as ink, without any after-glow, as had invariably been noticed at previous sunsets. The whole sky was dark and pitchy like; only a few stars showing themselves momentarily for a while high up towards the zenith, although they were soon hidden by the mantle of sombre cloud that enveloped the heavens everywhere.

Meanwhile, the entire surface of the sea, in every direction as far as their eyes could reach, seemed as if covered with a coating of frosted silver; and, all around the ship, at the water-line, there appeared a brilliant illumination, as if from a row of gas jets or like the footlights in front of the stage of a theatre. Where the sea, too, was broken into foam by the slight motion of the ship, it also gave out the same appearance; and the faint wake astern was as bright as the track usually lit up by the moon or rising sun across the ocean, resembling a pathway of light yellow gold.

When Fritz first saw the reflection, on looking over the side of the ship, he thought that something had happened down below, and that the appearance he noticed was caused by different lights, streaming through the portholes and scuttles.

“What are they doing with all those lanterns in the hold?” he asked Eric in surprise.

The sailor lad laughed.

“No ship lanterns,” said he, “are at work here. They say that this queer look of the sea is occasioned by thousands of little insects that float on the surface and which are like the fireflies of the tropics. Don’t you recollect reading about them?”

“But then, this light is so continuous,” replied Fritz. “It is bright as far away as we can see.”

“Yes, I suppose the shoal of insects stretches onward for miles; still, it is only when it is dark like this, with the sky overcast, that you can see them. At least, that is what I’ve been told, for I never saw such a display before.”

“You’re ’bout right, my lad,” observed Captain Brown, who had come over to leeward, where the brothers were. “I forgit what they call the durned things; but, they’re as thick as muskitters on the Florida coast. You’ll see ’em all clear away as soon as the moon shows a streak, though. They can’t stand her candlelight, you bet!”

It was as the skipper said. Although the illumination of the sea was so vivid that it lit up the ship’s sails with flashes as the water was stirred, it died away when the moon shone out. Then, too, the sky lightened all round and the clouds cleared away before the approaching wind which had thus apparently heralded its coming.

Nothing occurred after this to break the monotony of the voyage, beyond a school of whales being noticed blowing in the distance away to the windward one day, about a week after the change of wind.

“There she spouts!” called out a man who was up in the fore cross-trees, overhauling some of the running gear; but the hail only occasioned a little temporary excitement, for the animals were much too far off for pursuit and, besides, Captain Brown wished to land the brothers and clear his ship of all cargo before going whaling on his own account.

This consummation, however, was not long distant; for some sixteen days or so after they had turned their backs on the South American coast, the skipper told Fritz he hoped to be at Tristan on the morrow. This was when he and the captain were having their usual quarter-deck walk in the first watch, the evening of the same day on which they passed the school of whales.

“Yes, sirree,” he said, “we’ve run down to 36 degrees South latitude, I guess, an’ wer ’bout 13 degrees West when I took the sun at noon; so I kalkerlate, if the wind don’t fail an’ the shep keeps on goin’ as she is, which is bootiful, I reckon, why we’ll fetch Tristan nigh on breakfus-time to-morrow,—yes, sir!”

“Indeed!” exclaimed Fritz. He did not think they were anywhere near the place yet; for, although it was more than two months since they had left Narraganset Bay, the ship appeared to sail so sluggishly and the voyage to be so tedious, that he would not have been surprised to hear some day from the captain that they would not reach their destination until somewhere about Christmas time!

“Ya-as, really, I guess so, mister. No doubt you’re a bit flustered at gettin’ thaar so soon; but thePilot’s Bride’ssich a powerful clipper thet we’ve kinder raced here, an’ arrove afore we wer due, I reckon!”

The skipper innocently took Fritz’s expression of surprise to be a compliment to the ship’s sailing powers; and so Fritz would not undeceive him by telling him his real opinion about the vessel. It would have been cruel to try and weaken his belief in the lubberly old whaler, every piece of timber in whose hull he loved with a fatherly affection almost equal to that with which he regarded his daughter Celia.

Fritz therefore limited himself to an expression of delight at the speedy termination of their voyage, without hazarding any comment on thePilot’s Bride’sprogress; by which means he avoided either hurting the old skipper’s feelings or telling an untruth, which he would otherwise have had to do.

He was undoubtedly glad to have advanced so far in their undertaking; for, once arrived at Tristan d’Acunha, a few more days would see them landed on Inaccessible Island, when, he and Eric would really begin their crusoe life of seal-catching and “making the best” of it, in solitary state.

Wasn’t he up on deck early next morning, turning out of his bunk as soon as he heard the first mate calling the captain at four bells—although, when he got there, he found Eric had preceded him, he having charge of the morning watch and having been up two hours before himself!

However, neither of the brothers had much the advantage of the other; for, up to breakfast time, Tristan had not been sighted.

But, about noon, “a change came o’er the spirit of their dream!”

Captain Brown had just gone below to his cabin to get his sextant in order to take the sun, while Fritz, to quiet his impatience, had sat down on the top of the cuddy skylight with a book in his hand, which he was pretending to read so as to cheat himself, as it were; when, suddenly, there came a shout from a man whom the skipper had ordered to be placed on the look-out forward—a shout that rang through the ship.

“Land ho!”

Fritz dropped his book on to the deck at once and Eric sprang up into the mizzen rigging, hurriedly scrambling up the ratlins to the masthead, whence he would have a better point of observation; the skipper meanwhile racing up the companion way with his sextant in his hand.

“Land—where away?” he sang out, hailing the man on the fore cross-trees.

“Dead away to leeward, two points off the beam,” was the answer at once returned by the man on the look-out, who happened, strangely enough, to be Fritz’s whilom acquaintance, the “deck hand!”

“Are you sure?” hailed the captain again to make certain.

“As sure as there’s claws on a Rocky Mountain b’ar,” replied the man in a tone of voice that showed he was a bit nettled at his judgment being questioned; for he next added, quite loud enough for all to hear, “I guess I oughter know land when I see it. I ain’t a child put out to dry nurse, I ain’t!”

“There, thet’ll do; stow thet palaver!” said Captain Brown sharply, “else you’ll find thet if Rocky Mountain b’ars hev claws, they ken use ’em, an’ hug with a prutty good grip of their own too, when they mean bizness, I guess, Nat Slater; so, you’d better quiet down an’ keep thet sass o’ yourn for some un else!”

This stopped the fellow’s grumbling at once; and Captain Brown, after proceeding aloft to have a look for himself and see how far the island was off, gave directions for having the ship’s course altered, letting her fall off a point or two from the wind.

“I guess I wer standin’ a bit too much to the northward,” he said to Fritz, who was waiting on the poop, longing to ask him a thousand questions as to when they would get in, and where they would land, and so on; “but thet don’t matter much, as we are well to win’ard, an’ ken fetch the land as we like.”

The island, which at first appeared like a sort of low-lying cloud on the horizon, was now plainly perceptible, a faint mountain peak being noticeable, just rising in the centre of the dark patch of haze.

“Is it far off?” asked Fritz.

“’Bout fifty mile or so, I sh’u’d think, mister,” answered the skipper—“thet is more or less, as the air down below the line is clearer than it is north, so folks ken see further, I guess. I don’t kinder think it’s more’n fifty mile, though, sou’-sou’-west o’ whar the shep is now.”

“Fifty miles!” repeated Fritz, somewhat disconcerted by the announcement; for, he would not have thought the object, which all could now see from the deck, more than half that distance away. “Why, we’ll never get there to-day!”

“Won’t we?” said the skipper. “Thet’s all you know ’bout it, mister. ThePilot’s Bride’ll walk over thet little bit o’ water like a race hoss, an’ ’ill arrive at Tristan ’fore dinner time, you bet!”

The skipper’s prognostication as to the time of their arrival did not turn out quite correct, but Fritz’s anxiety was allayed by their reaching the place the same night; for, the mountain peak, which had been noticed above the haze that hung over the lower part of the island, began to rise higher and higher as the ship approached, until its sharp ridges could be plainly seen beneath a covering of snow that enveloped the upper cone and which changed its colour from glistening white to a bright pink hue as it became lit up by the rays of the setting sun—the latter dipping beneath the western horizon at the same instant that thePilot’s Bridecast anchor in a shallow bay some little distance off the land, close to Herald Point, where the English settlement on the island lies.

Chapter Twenty One.An Ocean Colony.Fritz and Eric wished to go ashore the moment the anchor plunged into the water and the chain cable grated through the hawse hole; but, darkness setting in almost immediately after sunset, as is usual in such southerly latitudes, their landing had to be postponed until the next morning, when the skipper told them they would have plenty of time to inspect the little ocean colony of Tristan d’Acunha—that is, should not a westerly-wind set in, bringing with it a heavy swell, as it invariably did; for, this would cause them “to cut and run from their anchorage in a jiffy,” if they did not desire to lay the ship’s bones on the rocks by Herald Point, which he, “for one,” he said, had no intention of doing.However, the wind still remained in the same quarter, blowing steadily from the south-east, which made it calm where thePilot’s Bridewas lying—Captain Brown from previous experience knowing the safest berth to take up—so she did not have to shift her berth. When morning broke, too, the brothers had a better view of the place than on the evening before; for then, only a hasty peep at it could be obtained before it was hidden by night.The small bay in which the ship was moored opened to the westward; and, on the right, a slope of rough pasture land, about a quarter of a mile in width, ran up from the beach to an almost precipitous wall of rock, a thousand feet or more in height—although a sort of misty vapour hung over it, which prevented Fritz from gauging its right altitude. On the left-hand side, the wall of rock came sheer down into the sea, leaving only a few yards of narrow shingle, on which the surf noisily broke. A stream leaped down from the high ground, nearly opposite the vessel, and the low fall with which it tumbled into the bay at this point indicated that there would be found the best landing-place, an opinion which Captain Brown confirmed as soon as he came on deck.“I guess, though,” said the skipper, pointing out a red flag which Fritz could notice just being hoisted on one of the cottage chimneys in the distance, “we needn’t hurry ’bout launchin’ a boat, fur some o’ them islanders are comin’ off to pay us a visit an’ will take you ashore. Thet’s their signal for communicatin’ with any vessel thet calls in here. Run up our ensign, Mr Dort,” he added to Eric, who stood at his station on the lee side of the mizzen mast; “an’ tell ’em to fire the gun forrud, jest to give ’em a kinder sort o’ salute, you know. Uncle Sam likes to do the civil, the same as other men-o’-war when they goes to foreign ports!”These orders were obeyed; and no sooner were the “Stars and Stripes” run up to the masthead and the report of the little gun on the topgallant fo’c’s’le heard reverberating through the distant mountain tops—the sound of the discharge being caught up and echoed between the narrow arms of the bay—than a smart whale-boat, pulled by eight men and with a white-bearded, venerable-looking individual seated in the stern-sheets, was seen coming out from the very spot which Fritz had determined to be the landing-place.They were soon alongside thePilot’s Bride; when the old man—who introduced himself as Green, the oldest inhabitant of the island and with whom Captain Brown had already had an acquaintance of some years’ duration—cordially invited Fritz to land, the skipper having explained that he wished to see the place and hear all about it. He told the brothers aside, however, that perhaps they’d better not mention their intention of settling on Inaccessible Island, for the inhabitants of Tristan, who sent expeditions every year on sealing excursions there, might not like to hear this news.While on their way to the shore with the old man and four of the islanders—the other Tristaners remaining on board the ship to select certain articles they required from her stores and arrange for the barter of fresh meat and potatoes with Captain Brown in exchange—Fritz observed that, some distance out from the land, there was a sort of natural breakwater, composed of the long, flat leaves of a giant species of seaweed which grew up from the bottom, where its roots extended to the depth of fifteen fathoms. This, old Green pointed out, prevented the rollers, when the wind was from the westward, from breaking too violently on the shore, between which and the floating weed was a belt of calm water, as undisturbed as the surface of a mountain tarn.The landing-place was of fine black sand, showing the volcanic character of the mountain peak above, which Green said was over eight thousand feet high and had an extinct crater on the top; and, when Fritz and his brother had jumped out of the boat, they proceeded up to the little settlement of the islanders, which was called “Edinburgh” out of compliment to his Royal Highness Prince Alfred, who had visited the place when cruising in HMSGalatea, just four years before their landing.The village consisted of some dozen cottages or so, roughly built of square blocks of hewn stone dovetailed into each other, without mortar, and thatched with tussock-grass. The houses were scattered about, each in its own little garden, enclosed by walls of loosely piled stones about four feet high; but, as it was now the early spring of Tristan, these had very little growing in them. One of the enclosures, Fritz noticed, had a lot of marigolds in flower, another, several dwarf strawberry plants just budding, while a third was filled with young onions; but the majority displayed only the same coarse, long tussock-grass with which the cottages were thatched.When the brothers came to examine the houses more closely, they were particularly struck with the neatness with which they were constructed and the extreme labour that must have been expended on them.Apart from the difficulty of procuring wood, which they could only get from stray whaling ships, the islanders are obliged to build their dwellings of stone, in order to prevent their being demolished by the fierce and frequent hurricanes that assail the isolated little spot, exposed as it is to all the rude blustering blasts that career over the expanse of the Atlantic. The cottages are, therefore, put together with a dark-brown, soft sort of stone, which is hewn out in great blocks from the cliffs above the settlement and afterwards shaped with great accuracy and care with the axe. Many of these masses of stone are upwards of a ton in weight; but, still, they are cut so as to lock into one another in a double row to form the main wall, which is some eighteen inches thick, with smaller pieces of stone, selected with equal care as to their fitting, placed in between. There is no lime on the island, so that the blocks are put together on the cyclopean plan, without cement. They are also raised into their places in the same primitive fashion, strong spars being used for inclined planes, up which these monoliths are pushed by manual labour in a similar way to that described in the old hieroglyphics of the Nineveh marbles. With all these precautions as to strength, however, the sou’-westers blow with such fierceness into the little bay where the colony is situated, that many of these massive buildings, Green said, were constantly blown down, the huge blocks being tumbled about like pieces of cork!The roofs were thatched with the long grass that Fritz had seen growing in the gardens and with which he had later on a closer and more painful acquaintance, the tussock fibres being fastened inside to light poles that were attached to rafters placed horizontally, while the ridges outside were covered with bands of green turf, firmly fixed on.As for the colony, which numbered some eighty souls in all, it consisted of fifteen families, who possessed from five to six hundred head of cattle and about an equal supply of sheep, with lots of pigs and poultry, each family having its own stock in the same way that each cultivated its own garden; but, there was a common grazing ground, where also large quantities of potatoes were raised—the trade of the island being principally with the American whalers, who take supplies of fresh meat and vegetables, for which they barter manufactured goods, household stuffs, and “notions.”During their visit, Fritz and Eric were hospitably entertained by the old man Green at his cottage, which had three large rooms and was the best in the place; and the roast pig which furnished the main dish of the banquet was all the more toothsome, by reason of the long time the brothers had been at sea and so deprived of fresh meat and those good things of the land, to which they had grown somewhat accustomed during their stay at the comfortable shanty on Narraganset Bay under Mrs Brown’s auspices.Indirectly, too, Fritz found out a great deal about Inaccessible Island; and, the more he heard, the more firmly rooted became his determination to settle there. The seals, old Green said, were numerous enough; but, he added that the islanders were only able to pay a short visit in December every year, and so lost considerable chances of taking more of them.“Aha,” thought Fritz, “we’ll be there altogether, and so will have opportunities for taking them all the year round. Tristaners, my good people, look out for your sealskins and oil in future; we, crusoes, are going into the business wholesale!”When the brothers were rowed back to the ship in the evening—having spent the entire day on the island in noticing what would be most useful to themselves subsequently for the new life they were about to adopt—the other Tristaners who had remained on board choosing goods returned to the shore, promising to send the value of the articles they had selected in beef and potatoes on the following morning. Before turning in for the night, however, Captain Brown gave Fritz to read a newspaper extract which he had posted into his logbook. This detailed the early history of the little colony, and the gist of it was as follows:—Although discovered as early as the year 1506 by d’Acunha, the first comparatively modern navigator who visited the island was the captain of an American ship—theIndustry, a whaler sailing from Philadelphia—who remained at Tristan from August, 1790, to April, 1791, his people pitching their tents on almost the precise spot now occupied by the settlement. At the time of this vessel’s visit, it was mentioned that there was plenty of wood of a small growth excellent for firewood; but this Fritz noticed was not the case when he inspected the place during the day, hardly anything but slight brush being apparent beyond the tussock-grass. The American captain also stated that the amount of sea animals of all kinds on the island—whales, seals, and penguins—was almost inexhaustible, his party having procured over six thousand sealskins during their stay of seven months, besides killing more whales than they could find room for the oil from them in their ship! This, too, had become altered during the years which had elapsed, the seals getting scarcer at Tristan now, through the wholesale war carried on against them by the islanders, who latterly, with the exception of the visits they paid to Inaccessible Island and Nightingale Islet—according to old Green’s account—had almost abandoned the pursuit for sheer want of sport.The next mention of Tristan d’Acunha, as related in the printed chronicle Fritz read, was in the year after the American captain’s sojourn there, when two British ships of war, theLionandHindostan, which were probably East Indiamen, with the English embassy to China on board, anchored off the north side of the island under the cliff of the mountain peak; but, a sudden squall coming on, these vessels had to leave without investigating the place thoroughly, although their commanders described it as being uninhabited at that time.Nine years later, the captain of another ship that called there found three Americans settled on the island, preparing sealskins and boiling down oil. Goats and pigs had been set adrift by some of the earlier visitors, as well as vegetables planted, and these colonists appeared to be in a very flourishing condition, declaring themselves perfectly contented to pass their lives there. One of the men, indeed, had drawn up a proclamation, stating that he was the king of the country, a title which the others acknowledged; and the three, the monarch and his two subjects, had cleared about fifty acres of land, which they had sown with various things, including coffee-trees and sugar-canes; but, whether this plantation turned out unsuccessful, or from some other notion, the “king” and his colleagues abandoned the settlement—the place remaining deserted until the year 1817, when, during Napoleon Buonaparte’s captivity at Saint Helena, the island was formally taken possession of by the English Government, a guard of soldiers being especially drafted thither for its protection, selected from the Cape of Good Hope garrison.This was, undoubtedly, the foundation of the present colony; for, although the military picket was withdrawn in the following year, a corporal of artillery with his wife and two brother soldiers, who expressed a desire to remain on the island, stayed behind. Since then, Tristan has always been inhabited—the original little colony of four souls having formed the nucleus of the present settlement of over eighty, men joining it at various times from passing whalers, while women were imported from the Cape when wives were wanted. From the fact of these latter being mostly Hottentots, the complexion of the younger men, Fritz noticed, was somewhat darker than that of Europeans. This explained what the skipper meant, on first telling him about the island, when he said the inhabitants were “mulattoes”; although Fritz thought them only of a brunette tinge, for they were of much lighter hue than many Spaniards and Italians whom he had met on the Continent.Glass, the ex-artilleryman and original founder of the English settlement, was a Scotchman, born at Kelso. He seems to have been a man of great principle and energy, these qualities gaining for him the complete confidence of the little community over which his authority was quite of a patriarchal character. For thirty-seven years he maintained his position as leader, representing the colony in all its transactions with passing ships and showing himself just and honest in his dealings. The islanders had always been English-speaking, and having strong British sympathies, “Governor Glass,” as he was styled, received permission from one of the naval officers visiting the island to hoist the red ensign, as a signal to vessels going by. This slight official recognition was all the notice that the settlement has received from England ever since its establishment—that is, beyond the sending out of a chaplain there by the “Religious Tract Society,” who remained for five years and when leaving spoke of the members of the little settlement as being so highly moral that they did not require any spiritual ministration, “there not being a vice in the colony to contend with!”To this latter statement, Fritz found the skipper had appended an eccentric footnote:— “’Cos why, there ain’t no rum handier than the Cape, the little to be got from the whalers visiting the spot—an’ they have little enough from me, you bet!—being speedily guzzled down by the old birds, an’ the young uns never gettin’ a taste o’ the pizen!”On Glass’s death, he was succeeded in the leadership of the colony by Green, the next oldest man, who now lived in the house of the late founder of the settlement and hoisted the English ensign in his turn. Green was a venerable-looking man, with a long white beard, and seemed, from what Fritz could gather in his different conversations with the islanders, to have successfully followed in his predecessor’s footsteps.Since the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit in theGalatea, many other stray men-of-war have occasionally called to see how the islanders were getting on; but the principal trading communication they have has always been with American whalers, some round dozen of which call at Tristan yearly for the purposes of barter.“An’ I guess it’s a downright shame,” said Captain Brown, when mentioning this latter fact to Fritz, “thet they don’t fly the star-spangled banner instead o’ thet there rag of a British ensign! If it weren’t for us whalers, they’d starve fur want of wood to warm themselves in winter; an’, who’d buy their beef an’ mutton an’ fixins, if we didn’t call in, hey?”“That’s a conundrum, and I give it up,” answered Fritz with a laugh.“Ah, you’re a sly coon,” said the skipper, sailing away to his cabin. “I guess it’s ’bout time to bunk in, mister, so I’m off. Good-night!”“Good-night!” returned Fritz, shutting up the log book and going his way likewise to the small state room set apart for the use of himself and his brother, where he found Eric asleep and snoring away soundly, the tramping about ashore having completely tired out the lad.

Fritz and Eric wished to go ashore the moment the anchor plunged into the water and the chain cable grated through the hawse hole; but, darkness setting in almost immediately after sunset, as is usual in such southerly latitudes, their landing had to be postponed until the next morning, when the skipper told them they would have plenty of time to inspect the little ocean colony of Tristan d’Acunha—that is, should not a westerly-wind set in, bringing with it a heavy swell, as it invariably did; for, this would cause them “to cut and run from their anchorage in a jiffy,” if they did not desire to lay the ship’s bones on the rocks by Herald Point, which he, “for one,” he said, had no intention of doing.

However, the wind still remained in the same quarter, blowing steadily from the south-east, which made it calm where thePilot’s Bridewas lying—Captain Brown from previous experience knowing the safest berth to take up—so she did not have to shift her berth. When morning broke, too, the brothers had a better view of the place than on the evening before; for then, only a hasty peep at it could be obtained before it was hidden by night.

The small bay in which the ship was moored opened to the westward; and, on the right, a slope of rough pasture land, about a quarter of a mile in width, ran up from the beach to an almost precipitous wall of rock, a thousand feet or more in height—although a sort of misty vapour hung over it, which prevented Fritz from gauging its right altitude. On the left-hand side, the wall of rock came sheer down into the sea, leaving only a few yards of narrow shingle, on which the surf noisily broke. A stream leaped down from the high ground, nearly opposite the vessel, and the low fall with which it tumbled into the bay at this point indicated that there would be found the best landing-place, an opinion which Captain Brown confirmed as soon as he came on deck.

“I guess, though,” said the skipper, pointing out a red flag which Fritz could notice just being hoisted on one of the cottage chimneys in the distance, “we needn’t hurry ’bout launchin’ a boat, fur some o’ them islanders are comin’ off to pay us a visit an’ will take you ashore. Thet’s their signal for communicatin’ with any vessel thet calls in here. Run up our ensign, Mr Dort,” he added to Eric, who stood at his station on the lee side of the mizzen mast; “an’ tell ’em to fire the gun forrud, jest to give ’em a kinder sort o’ salute, you know. Uncle Sam likes to do the civil, the same as other men-o’-war when they goes to foreign ports!”

These orders were obeyed; and no sooner were the “Stars and Stripes” run up to the masthead and the report of the little gun on the topgallant fo’c’s’le heard reverberating through the distant mountain tops—the sound of the discharge being caught up and echoed between the narrow arms of the bay—than a smart whale-boat, pulled by eight men and with a white-bearded, venerable-looking individual seated in the stern-sheets, was seen coming out from the very spot which Fritz had determined to be the landing-place.

They were soon alongside thePilot’s Bride; when the old man—who introduced himself as Green, the oldest inhabitant of the island and with whom Captain Brown had already had an acquaintance of some years’ duration—cordially invited Fritz to land, the skipper having explained that he wished to see the place and hear all about it. He told the brothers aside, however, that perhaps they’d better not mention their intention of settling on Inaccessible Island, for the inhabitants of Tristan, who sent expeditions every year on sealing excursions there, might not like to hear this news.

While on their way to the shore with the old man and four of the islanders—the other Tristaners remaining on board the ship to select certain articles they required from her stores and arrange for the barter of fresh meat and potatoes with Captain Brown in exchange—Fritz observed that, some distance out from the land, there was a sort of natural breakwater, composed of the long, flat leaves of a giant species of seaweed which grew up from the bottom, where its roots extended to the depth of fifteen fathoms. This, old Green pointed out, prevented the rollers, when the wind was from the westward, from breaking too violently on the shore, between which and the floating weed was a belt of calm water, as undisturbed as the surface of a mountain tarn.

The landing-place was of fine black sand, showing the volcanic character of the mountain peak above, which Green said was over eight thousand feet high and had an extinct crater on the top; and, when Fritz and his brother had jumped out of the boat, they proceeded up to the little settlement of the islanders, which was called “Edinburgh” out of compliment to his Royal Highness Prince Alfred, who had visited the place when cruising in HMSGalatea, just four years before their landing.

The village consisted of some dozen cottages or so, roughly built of square blocks of hewn stone dovetailed into each other, without mortar, and thatched with tussock-grass. The houses were scattered about, each in its own little garden, enclosed by walls of loosely piled stones about four feet high; but, as it was now the early spring of Tristan, these had very little growing in them. One of the enclosures, Fritz noticed, had a lot of marigolds in flower, another, several dwarf strawberry plants just budding, while a third was filled with young onions; but the majority displayed only the same coarse, long tussock-grass with which the cottages were thatched.

When the brothers came to examine the houses more closely, they were particularly struck with the neatness with which they were constructed and the extreme labour that must have been expended on them.

Apart from the difficulty of procuring wood, which they could only get from stray whaling ships, the islanders are obliged to build their dwellings of stone, in order to prevent their being demolished by the fierce and frequent hurricanes that assail the isolated little spot, exposed as it is to all the rude blustering blasts that career over the expanse of the Atlantic. The cottages are, therefore, put together with a dark-brown, soft sort of stone, which is hewn out in great blocks from the cliffs above the settlement and afterwards shaped with great accuracy and care with the axe. Many of these masses of stone are upwards of a ton in weight; but, still, they are cut so as to lock into one another in a double row to form the main wall, which is some eighteen inches thick, with smaller pieces of stone, selected with equal care as to their fitting, placed in between. There is no lime on the island, so that the blocks are put together on the cyclopean plan, without cement. They are also raised into their places in the same primitive fashion, strong spars being used for inclined planes, up which these monoliths are pushed by manual labour in a similar way to that described in the old hieroglyphics of the Nineveh marbles. With all these precautions as to strength, however, the sou’-westers blow with such fierceness into the little bay where the colony is situated, that many of these massive buildings, Green said, were constantly blown down, the huge blocks being tumbled about like pieces of cork!

The roofs were thatched with the long grass that Fritz had seen growing in the gardens and with which he had later on a closer and more painful acquaintance, the tussock fibres being fastened inside to light poles that were attached to rafters placed horizontally, while the ridges outside were covered with bands of green turf, firmly fixed on.

As for the colony, which numbered some eighty souls in all, it consisted of fifteen families, who possessed from five to six hundred head of cattle and about an equal supply of sheep, with lots of pigs and poultry, each family having its own stock in the same way that each cultivated its own garden; but, there was a common grazing ground, where also large quantities of potatoes were raised—the trade of the island being principally with the American whalers, who take supplies of fresh meat and vegetables, for which they barter manufactured goods, household stuffs, and “notions.”

During their visit, Fritz and Eric were hospitably entertained by the old man Green at his cottage, which had three large rooms and was the best in the place; and the roast pig which furnished the main dish of the banquet was all the more toothsome, by reason of the long time the brothers had been at sea and so deprived of fresh meat and those good things of the land, to which they had grown somewhat accustomed during their stay at the comfortable shanty on Narraganset Bay under Mrs Brown’s auspices.

Indirectly, too, Fritz found out a great deal about Inaccessible Island; and, the more he heard, the more firmly rooted became his determination to settle there. The seals, old Green said, were numerous enough; but, he added that the islanders were only able to pay a short visit in December every year, and so lost considerable chances of taking more of them.

“Aha,” thought Fritz, “we’ll be there altogether, and so will have opportunities for taking them all the year round. Tristaners, my good people, look out for your sealskins and oil in future; we, crusoes, are going into the business wholesale!”

When the brothers were rowed back to the ship in the evening—having spent the entire day on the island in noticing what would be most useful to themselves subsequently for the new life they were about to adopt—the other Tristaners who had remained on board choosing goods returned to the shore, promising to send the value of the articles they had selected in beef and potatoes on the following morning. Before turning in for the night, however, Captain Brown gave Fritz to read a newspaper extract which he had posted into his logbook. This detailed the early history of the little colony, and the gist of it was as follows:—

Although discovered as early as the year 1506 by d’Acunha, the first comparatively modern navigator who visited the island was the captain of an American ship—theIndustry, a whaler sailing from Philadelphia—who remained at Tristan from August, 1790, to April, 1791, his people pitching their tents on almost the precise spot now occupied by the settlement. At the time of this vessel’s visit, it was mentioned that there was plenty of wood of a small growth excellent for firewood; but this Fritz noticed was not the case when he inspected the place during the day, hardly anything but slight brush being apparent beyond the tussock-grass. The American captain also stated that the amount of sea animals of all kinds on the island—whales, seals, and penguins—was almost inexhaustible, his party having procured over six thousand sealskins during their stay of seven months, besides killing more whales than they could find room for the oil from them in their ship! This, too, had become altered during the years which had elapsed, the seals getting scarcer at Tristan now, through the wholesale war carried on against them by the islanders, who latterly, with the exception of the visits they paid to Inaccessible Island and Nightingale Islet—according to old Green’s account—had almost abandoned the pursuit for sheer want of sport.

The next mention of Tristan d’Acunha, as related in the printed chronicle Fritz read, was in the year after the American captain’s sojourn there, when two British ships of war, theLionandHindostan, which were probably East Indiamen, with the English embassy to China on board, anchored off the north side of the island under the cliff of the mountain peak; but, a sudden squall coming on, these vessels had to leave without investigating the place thoroughly, although their commanders described it as being uninhabited at that time.

Nine years later, the captain of another ship that called there found three Americans settled on the island, preparing sealskins and boiling down oil. Goats and pigs had been set adrift by some of the earlier visitors, as well as vegetables planted, and these colonists appeared to be in a very flourishing condition, declaring themselves perfectly contented to pass their lives there. One of the men, indeed, had drawn up a proclamation, stating that he was the king of the country, a title which the others acknowledged; and the three, the monarch and his two subjects, had cleared about fifty acres of land, which they had sown with various things, including coffee-trees and sugar-canes; but, whether this plantation turned out unsuccessful, or from some other notion, the “king” and his colleagues abandoned the settlement—the place remaining deserted until the year 1817, when, during Napoleon Buonaparte’s captivity at Saint Helena, the island was formally taken possession of by the English Government, a guard of soldiers being especially drafted thither for its protection, selected from the Cape of Good Hope garrison.

This was, undoubtedly, the foundation of the present colony; for, although the military picket was withdrawn in the following year, a corporal of artillery with his wife and two brother soldiers, who expressed a desire to remain on the island, stayed behind. Since then, Tristan has always been inhabited—the original little colony of four souls having formed the nucleus of the present settlement of over eighty, men joining it at various times from passing whalers, while women were imported from the Cape when wives were wanted. From the fact of these latter being mostly Hottentots, the complexion of the younger men, Fritz noticed, was somewhat darker than that of Europeans. This explained what the skipper meant, on first telling him about the island, when he said the inhabitants were “mulattoes”; although Fritz thought them only of a brunette tinge, for they were of much lighter hue than many Spaniards and Italians whom he had met on the Continent.

Glass, the ex-artilleryman and original founder of the English settlement, was a Scotchman, born at Kelso. He seems to have been a man of great principle and energy, these qualities gaining for him the complete confidence of the little community over which his authority was quite of a patriarchal character. For thirty-seven years he maintained his position as leader, representing the colony in all its transactions with passing ships and showing himself just and honest in his dealings. The islanders had always been English-speaking, and having strong British sympathies, “Governor Glass,” as he was styled, received permission from one of the naval officers visiting the island to hoist the red ensign, as a signal to vessels going by. This slight official recognition was all the notice that the settlement has received from England ever since its establishment—that is, beyond the sending out of a chaplain there by the “Religious Tract Society,” who remained for five years and when leaving spoke of the members of the little settlement as being so highly moral that they did not require any spiritual ministration, “there not being a vice in the colony to contend with!”

To this latter statement, Fritz found the skipper had appended an eccentric footnote:— “’Cos why, there ain’t no rum handier than the Cape, the little to be got from the whalers visiting the spot—an’ they have little enough from me, you bet!—being speedily guzzled down by the old birds, an’ the young uns never gettin’ a taste o’ the pizen!”

On Glass’s death, he was succeeded in the leadership of the colony by Green, the next oldest man, who now lived in the house of the late founder of the settlement and hoisted the English ensign in his turn. Green was a venerable-looking man, with a long white beard, and seemed, from what Fritz could gather in his different conversations with the islanders, to have successfully followed in his predecessor’s footsteps.

Since the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit in theGalatea, many other stray men-of-war have occasionally called to see how the islanders were getting on; but the principal trading communication they have has always been with American whalers, some round dozen of which call at Tristan yearly for the purposes of barter.

“An’ I guess it’s a downright shame,” said Captain Brown, when mentioning this latter fact to Fritz, “thet they don’t fly the star-spangled banner instead o’ thet there rag of a British ensign! If it weren’t for us whalers, they’d starve fur want of wood to warm themselves in winter; an’, who’d buy their beef an’ mutton an’ fixins, if we didn’t call in, hey?”

“That’s a conundrum, and I give it up,” answered Fritz with a laugh.

“Ah, you’re a sly coon,” said the skipper, sailing away to his cabin. “I guess it’s ’bout time to bunk in, mister, so I’m off. Good-night!”

“Good-night!” returned Fritz, shutting up the log book and going his way likewise to the small state room set apart for the use of himself and his brother, where he found Eric asleep and snoring away soundly, the tramping about ashore having completely tired out the lad.

Chapter Twenty Two.“Alone!”The next morning, when Fritz got on deck, he found the ship diving and courtesying to her anchor, while an ominous swell came rolling in past her from the westward towards the beach. The surf, too, was breaking against the boulders of the high rocky ramparts that came down sheer from the cliff on the left-hand side of the bay, which was now to the right of where Fritz was standing at the stern of thePilot’s Bride, she having swung round during the night and now laying head to sea.There was no wind to speak of, although there was evidently a change brewing; still, any one with half an eye could see that the skipper was quite prepared for any emergency, for the headsails of the vessel, instead of being furled up, now hung loose, the gaskets being cast-off and the bunts dropped. The men, also, were forward, heaving away at the windlass and getting up the cable, of which a considerable length had been paid out, the ship riding in over forty fathoms of water.“Hullo, mister,” exclaimed Captain Brown, when he noticed Fritz looking about him, as if perplexed as to what these signs meant,—“I told you we might hev to cut an’ run any moment!”“Why?” said Fritz.“Can’t you see, man,” retorted the other. “I thought you’d hev been half a sailor by this time, judgin’ by your smart lad of a brother! Why, the wind is jest choppin’ round to the west’ard, I reckon; an’, as I don’t kinder like to let the ship go to pieces on them thaar cliffs to loo’a’d, I guess we’re goin’ to make tracks into the offin’ an’ give the land a wide berth.”“Are you going to start soon?” asked Fritz.“Waall, there ain’t no ’mediate hurry, mister; but I allers like to be on the safe side, an’ when them islanders bring their second boatload o’ taters an’ t’other grub, I reckon we’ll be off. They’ve brought one lot already, in return for the dry goods an’ bread-stuffs I’ve let ’em hev; an’ when they bring the second, I guess the barg’in’ll be toted up!”Not long afterwards, Fritz saw the islanders’ boat coming off from the landing-place. It was pretty well laden, and the swell had increased so greatly that it sometimes was lost to sight in the trough between the heavy rollers that undulated towards the shore. The Tristaners, however, being accustomed to the water and experienced boatmen, did not make much of the waves; but, pulling a good steady stroke, were soon alongside—the bowman catching a rope which was hove from the chains and holding on, while the various contents of the cargo brought were handed on board. This operation had to be performed most dexterously; for, one moment, the little craft would be almost on a level with the ship’s bulwarks, while the next she would be thirty feet below, as the billowy surface of the sea sank below her keel.Eric was beside the skipper, checking the quantities of provisions which had been accurately calculated beforehand, for the Tristaners showed a keen eye to business and weighed everything they bartered for the whaler’s goods, when one of the men hailed him. This was the identical young fellow of whom he had spoken to Fritz when first expounding his projected scheme for going sealing to Inaccessible Island, and who, he mentioned besides, had told him all about the place. Indeed, he had actually suggested his going there. Eric had wondered much at not having come across this young man on the previous day when they had visited the settlement, although he looked about for him, so he was doubly pleased to see him now.“Hullo!” cried out this Tristaner to the young German. “So you are back again, eh?”“Yes,” said Eric. “Come aboard a moment; I want to speak to you.”“All right,” exclaimed the other, who was a fine, stalwart young fellow, with jet-black hair and a bronzed face that appeared to be more tanned by the weather than owing its hue to coloured blood; when, in a jiffy, he had swung himself into the chains by the rope attached to the boat’s bows and was by Eric’s side on the deck of thePilot’s Bride, his face all over smiles.“You’re the very chap I was wanting to see,” said Eric, shaking hands with him cordially. “I was puzzled to know what had become of you yesterday. I did not see you anywhere.”“I was away up the mountain, gathering grass,” replied the young fellow. “So, you’ve returned here, as you said you would, early in the year?”“You told me such fine accounts of the fishing,” retorted Eric with a laugh, “that, really, I couldn’t stop away. I want to talk to you about it again now. This is my brother,” he added, introducing Fritz.“Glad to know him,” said the Tristaner, bowing politely—indeed, the manners of all the islanders struck Fritz as being more polished than what he had observed in so-called civilised society. “Is he going to join you in settling on Inaccessible Island?”“Yes,” replied Eric. “He and I have determined to start sealing there. We have come from America on purpose. Is there anything more you can tell us about it?”“Have you got provisions to last you a year at the least? You must calculate to hold out so long, for no ship may be able to visit you earlier and you cannot count on procuring much food on the island.”“Oh, yes; we’ve got plenty of grub,” said Eric, using the sailor’s term for food.“And the things besides that I told you would be necessary?”“You may be certain of that,” replied Eric. “The only thing I see that we’ll have any difficulty about will be in rigging up a house. I’m sure that Fritz and I will never be able to build a substantial shanty like one of those you have here in your island.”“No, perhaps not,” said the young fellow, smiling. “You see, when we are going to run up a house, we all join together and lend a hand, which makes it easy work for us. It would be impossible for one or two men—or many more, indeed. I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you, though. If the captain of your ship here will promise to bring me back again to Tristan, I will go over there with you for a couple of days or so, to see you comfortably fixed up, as you Americans say, at Inaccessible Island, before you and your brother are left to yourselves.”“Agreed!” exclaimed Eric joyfully. “I will ask the skipper at once.”To dart across the deck to where Captain Brown was now standing by the open hatchway, overseeing the provisions being passed down into the ship’s hold, was, for the sailor lad, but the work of a moment!“Oh, Captain Brown,”—commenced Eric breathlessly, his excitement almost stopping his speech for a second.“Waall, what’s all the muss about?” said the old skipper, turning round and scanning the lad’s eager face. “Do you an’ your brother want to back out o’ the venture naow? I saw you talkin’ to thet Tristaner you met here with me in the spring.”“Back out of the project?” repeated Eric very indignantly. “Give up my pet plan, when everything is turning more and more in favour of it, captain? I should think not, indeed!”“Then, what’s the matter?” asked the skipper.“I want you to grant me a favour,” said Eric, hesitating a bit as the other looked at him steadfastly, a half-smile, half-grin on his weather-beaten countenance.“Thought sunthin’ wer up!” ejaculated the skipper. “Waall, what’s this durned favour o’ your’n?” he added in his good-natured way. “Spit it out, sonny, an’ don’t make sich a mealy mouth of it!”“This Tristaner—young Glass, you recollect him, don’t you, captain?” said Eric, proceeding with his request—“says he’ll come with us and help to build our cabin for us at Inaccessible Island, and settle us—”“Show you the ropes, in fact, hey?” interrupted the skipper.“Yes,” continued Eric. “He agrees to stop a day or two with us, till we feel at home, so to speak, if you will undertake to bring him back again and land him at Tristan before you go on to the Cape.”“Oh!” exclaimed the skipper, giving expression to a long, low whistle from between his closed teeth. “Thet’s the ticket, is it? Waall, I guess I don’t mind doin’ it to oblige you an’ your brother, though it’ll take me a main heap out o’ my way coastin’ up haar ag’in!”“Thank you; oh, thank you, captain,” said Eric, quite delighted with this promise; and he rushed back across the deck to tell the others the good news.While the young Tristaner was explaining matters to his comrades in the boat—from which all the stores had now been removed that had been brought off from the island and a few extra articles put in, which Captain Brown had made them a present of, as “boot” to the bargain of barter—the wind began to spring up in gusts, causing the ship’s sails to flap ominously against the masts.“Guess you’d better be off,” cried the skipper, coming to the side, where the two brothers and the young Tristaner who was going to accompany them stood leaning over, having a parting palaver with those in the boat below. “The breeze is risin’, an’ if you don’t kinder care ’bout startin’, I reckon we must. Shove off thaar!”“All right,” sang out one of the islanders, casting off the rope which attached them still to the ship. “Good-bye, and mind you bring our countryman back safe.”“You bet,” shouted the skipper. “I’ll take care o’ him as if he wer my own kin. Now, Eric,” he added, “you’ve got to tend your duties to the last aboard, you know; away aft with you an’ see to the mizzen sheets. All hands make sail!”The topsails were dropped at the same moment and sheeted home, while the jib was hoisted; and the ship, paying off, forged slowly up to her anchor.“Now, men,” sang out Captain Brown sharply. “Put your heart into thet windlass thaar, an’ git the cable in! It’s comin’ on to blow hard, an’ if you don’t look smart we’ll never git out of this durned bay in time!”Clink, clank, went round the unwieldy machine, as the crew heaved with a will, their movements quickened by the urgency of getting under weigh without delay, and each man exerting the strength of two.“Heave away, men!” chorussed the mate, standing over them and lending his voice to their harmonious chant. “Heave! Yo ho, heave!”A few hearty and long pulls, and then the anchor showed its stock.“Hook cat!” shouted the mate; whereupon, the fall being stretched along the deck, all hands laid hold.“Hurrah, up with her now, altogether!” came the next cry; and then, the anchor was bowsed up to the cathead to the lively chorus that rang through the ship, the men walking away with the fall as if it had no weight attached to it. The yards were now braced round and thePilot’s Bridebegan to beat out of the bay against the head wind, which was now blowing right on to the shore.“Guess we aren’t a bit too soon,” said the skipper, when the vessel, after her second tack to starboard, just cleared Herald Point. “If we’d stopped much longer, we’d been forced to stop altogether, I reckon!”“Was there any danger?” asked Fritz innocently.“Yes, mister; there’s allers danger to a shep with a gale comin’ on an’ a nasty shore under her lee. There’s nothin’ like the open sea for safety! When you can’t come to an anchor in a safe harbour, the best thing is to up cable an’ cut and run, say I!”Inaccessible Island was only about eighteen miles distant from Tristan; but, as it lay to the south-west of that island and the wind blew strongly from almost the same quarter, thePilot’s Bridehad to make a couple of long tacks before she could approach sufficiently near for Fritz to see the spot where he and his brother had elected to pass so many weary months of solitary exile.As the ship beat to windward, passing the island twice on either tack, he was able to notice what a bare, inhospitable-looking place it was.Its structure seemed pretty much the same as that of Tristan, with the exception that the snow-white cone projecting into the clouds, which was the most noticeable feature in the latter island, was here wanting; but, a wall of volcanic rocks, about the same height as the cliff of Tristan d’Acunha, entirely surrounded the desolate spot, falling for the most part sheer into the sea and only sloping, as far as could be seen from the distance the ship was off, sufficiently on one side to allow of any access to the top. Against this impenetrable, adamantine barrier, on the west, the heavy rolling sea that had travelled all the way from Cape Horn was breaking with a loud din, sending columns of spray flying over almost the highest peaks and making the scene grand but awesome at the same time.“Well might it be called Inaccessible Island!” exclaimed Fritz, gazing intently at the threatening cliffs and cruel surge.“Yes, sirree, it kinder skearts one to look at it, don’t it now, hey?”“I should think it more dangerous to approach than Tristan?” said Fritz presently.“I rayther guess so, mister,” replied the skipper. “I rec’lect readin’, when I was a b’y, of the wreck of a big East Indyman here bound fur Bombay. She wer called theBlenden Hall, an’ I ken call to mind, though it must be nigh fifty year ago, the hull yarn as to how she wer lost.”“Do you?” said Fritz. “I should like to hear about it.”“Waall, here goes, I reckon. You see as how there wer several ladies aboard, an’ it wer the plight they wer put in thet made me ’member it all. It wer in the month of July thet it happen’d, an’ the vessel, as I said afore, wer bound to Bombay. The weather bein’ thick an’ the master funky about his latitudes, findin’ himself by observation near these islands, he detarmined to look for ’em, in order to get a sight of ’em an’ correct his reck’nin’. I guess he hed too much of a sight soon; fur, a thick fog shortly shut out everythin’ from gaze, an’ lookin’ over the side he found the vessel in the midst of a lot o’ floatin’ weed. The helm wer put down, but by reason of light winds and a heavy swell settin’ in to the shore, the same as you just now saw at Tristan, the shep’s head couldn’t be got to come round. Breakers were now heard ahead, so the jolly-boat wer lowered with a tow-line to heave the bows round; but it wer of no use, as the wind hed failed entirely an’ the swell was a-drivin’ the shep on to the rocks. An anchor wer then let go, but the depth of water didn’t allow it to take hold, so, they lowered the cutter to help tow the shep’s head round, along with the jolly-boat, when all of a sudden she struck. The fog wer so thick by then, thet those on board couldn’t see the boats alongside, much less the shore. Howsomedever, they cut away the masts, to ease the vessel an’ stop her grindin’ on the rocks. Soon arter this, the fog lifted when those on board were frit by seein’ right over their heads apparently, those very terrific-lookin’ cliffs you see in front, just thaar—only thet they wer close into ’em, not more nor half a cable’s length off, an’ the heavy seas, sich as you ken now see runnin’ up the face of the rocky wall thaar, wer breaking boldly right over the shep—”“And,” interrupted Fritz, “what happened then?”“What could you expect?” replied the skipper. “I guess she wer beaten into matchwood in five minutes; although, won’erful to say, the hull of the passengers, ladies an’ all, wer got ashore safely, only one man bein’ drowned—an’ it sarved him right, as he was one of the crew who tried to escape when the shep first struck, an’ leave all the rest to perish! They wer all got to land by a hawser rigged from a peak of projectin’ rock to a bit of the wreck; an’ the ladies, I read, mister, an’ all o’ them, lived from July to November on penguins an’ seal flesh, which they cooked in part of an iron buoy that they sawed in half fur a kittle, shelterin’ themselves from the cold in tents thet they made out of the vessel’s sails. I reckon, mister, you’ll be kinder better provided fur an’ lodged, hey?”“Yes, thanks to your kindness,” said Fritz; “but the island seems completely encompassed by this rocky wall. I don’t see where and how we’re going to land and get our things on shore!”“Don’t you?” chuckled the skipper. “I guess you’ll soon see how we’ll fix it.”Presently, Fritz’s doubts were solved.When thePilot’s Bridehad worked her way well to windward of the island, the captain fetched down towards the eastern side, where, on rounding a point, a narrow bay lay right before the ship, quite sheltered from the rough swell and wind that reigned paramount on the other side of the coast, storming and beating against the wall-like cliffs in blind fury!Here, it was as calm as a mill pond; so, the ship was brought to an anchor right in front of a pretty little waterfall that leaped its way by a series of cascades from the cliff above to a level plateau at the base, where a narrow belt of low ground extended for about a mile in front of the bay, its seaweed face being bordered by a broad sandy beach of black sand.“Oh, that is pretty!” exclaimed Fritz and Eric, almost together in one breath. “It is like the falls of the Staubbach at home in dear Germany.”“I don’t know nary anythin’ ’bout thet,” said the skipper laconically, for the brothers spoke for the moment in their native tongue, carried away by old associations; “but I guess we’ll hev to see ’bout gettin’ your fixins ashore pretty sharp, fur the wind may change agin, an’ then I’d hev to cut an’ leave you.”“All right, captain, we’re quite at your service,” said Fritz; and, a boat being lowered, the various packages containing the brothers’ personal belongings, as well as the supply of provisions furnished by the skipper from the ship’s stores for their use, were put on board, after which the two then jumped in accompanied by Captain Brown and the young Tristaner, the little party being rowed ashore by four seamen whom the skipper had ordered to assist.As soon as they landed, the things were carried up the beach; when, the seamen bearing a hand,—directed by Captain Brown, who seemed quite used to the sort of work,—all devoted their efforts towards building a rough sort of house, which would serve the adventurous brothers for a temporary habitation until they could make themselves more comfortable.Young Glass selected the best site for the building; and the skipper having caused a lot of timber to be placed in the boat, a makeshift cottage was hastily run up, the walls being of blocks of stone without and of wood inside. The islander then thatched this neatly with tussock-grass, which grew all up the face of the cliff, where, as he showed the brothers, it could be utilised as a sort of ladder to gain the plateau on top—on which, he also told Fritz and Eric, they would find droves of wild hogs and a flock of goats that would come in handy for food when their provisions failed.The Tristaner had promised to remain with them as long as Captain Brown would stay with thePilot’s Bride, that is, for a week or so, if the weather was favourable. However, quite unexpectedly, towards afternoon on the next day—when the cottage was completed, it is true, but they had not as yet had time to explore the island in company with young Glass, in order to be familiarised as to the best spots for sealing, planting their potatoes and vegetable seeds, and so on—the wind shifted again round to the south-east; and no sooner was this change apparent than the skipper had to weigh anchor without a moment’s delay, when of course the Tristaner had to embark, or else submit to share the young crusoes’ exile.Captain Brown had remained on shore with them all the time from their landing, and he appeared now very loth to leave them at the last. Really, as they went down with him to the whale-boat in which they had come ashore, there were tears in the old man’s eyes, which he tried vainly to hide.“Pooh!” he exclaimed, stamping his foot vigorously. “It’s all them dratted ’skeaters or flies, or sunthin’s got inter my durned old optics as I can’t see! Hail the ship, Eric my lad, an’ tell ’em to send a boat to take us off, will you, sonny?”“But the whale-boat that we landed in is here, captain,” said Eric, thinking the skipper had forgotten all about it.“Nary you mind thet, my lad,” shouted the good-hearted old man; “I’m goin’ to leave thet with you fur a present, b’ys, in case you sh’u’d get tired an’ want ter shift your quarters to Tristan some day. It’s allers best to be purvided with the means of escape, you know, in case of the worst, for thePilot’s Bridemight get wracked down ’mongst the islands Kerguelen way, an’ no shep might ever call to take you off.”“Oh, captain, how can we thank you!” exclaimed Fritz, overcome with emotion at the skipper’s thoughtfulness. “Still, you will come and look us up next year should all be well with you, eh?”“You bet on thet,” replied the worthy old man. “I guess you’ll see me next fall, if I’m in the land o’ the livin’!”“And you’ll call to see if there are any letters for us at the Cape of Good Hope, won’t you? I told our people at home to write there, on the chance of their communications being forwarded on.”“I’ll bring ’em sure, if there’s any,” replied the skipper; and, by this time, a second boat having been sent off from the ship, in which the seamen who had pulled the first whale-boat ashore now took their places, along with the Tristan islander, it only remained for the kind old captain to embark—and then, the brothers would be crusoes indeed!“Good-bye, an’ God bless you, my b’ys,” he said, wringing first the hand of Fritz and then that of Eric, in a grip that almost crushed every feeling in those respective members. “Good-bye, my lads; but keep a stiff upper lip an’ you’ll do! Trust in providence, too, an’ look arter the seals, so as to be ready with a good cargo when I come back next fall!”“Good-bye, good old friend,” repeated Fritz, wringing his honest hand again on the old man stepping into the boat, the crew of which raised a parting cheer as it glided away to the ship, leaving the young crusoes behind on the beach!They watched with eager eyes the sails being dropped and the anchor weighed, thePilot’s Bridesoon after spreading her canvas and making way out of the little bay.Then, when she got into the offing, the skipper, as a final adieu, backed the vessel’s main-topsail and dipped her colours three times, firing the bow gun at the same time.It was a nautical farewell from their whilom comrades: and then the brothers were left alone!

The next morning, when Fritz got on deck, he found the ship diving and courtesying to her anchor, while an ominous swell came rolling in past her from the westward towards the beach. The surf, too, was breaking against the boulders of the high rocky ramparts that came down sheer from the cliff on the left-hand side of the bay, which was now to the right of where Fritz was standing at the stern of thePilot’s Bride, she having swung round during the night and now laying head to sea.

There was no wind to speak of, although there was evidently a change brewing; still, any one with half an eye could see that the skipper was quite prepared for any emergency, for the headsails of the vessel, instead of being furled up, now hung loose, the gaskets being cast-off and the bunts dropped. The men, also, were forward, heaving away at the windlass and getting up the cable, of which a considerable length had been paid out, the ship riding in over forty fathoms of water.

“Hullo, mister,” exclaimed Captain Brown, when he noticed Fritz looking about him, as if perplexed as to what these signs meant,—“I told you we might hev to cut an’ run any moment!”

“Why?” said Fritz.

“Can’t you see, man,” retorted the other. “I thought you’d hev been half a sailor by this time, judgin’ by your smart lad of a brother! Why, the wind is jest choppin’ round to the west’ard, I reckon; an’, as I don’t kinder like to let the ship go to pieces on them thaar cliffs to loo’a’d, I guess we’re goin’ to make tracks into the offin’ an’ give the land a wide berth.”

“Are you going to start soon?” asked Fritz.

“Waall, there ain’t no ’mediate hurry, mister; but I allers like to be on the safe side, an’ when them islanders bring their second boatload o’ taters an’ t’other grub, I reckon we’ll be off. They’ve brought one lot already, in return for the dry goods an’ bread-stuffs I’ve let ’em hev; an’ when they bring the second, I guess the barg’in’ll be toted up!”

Not long afterwards, Fritz saw the islanders’ boat coming off from the landing-place. It was pretty well laden, and the swell had increased so greatly that it sometimes was lost to sight in the trough between the heavy rollers that undulated towards the shore. The Tristaners, however, being accustomed to the water and experienced boatmen, did not make much of the waves; but, pulling a good steady stroke, were soon alongside—the bowman catching a rope which was hove from the chains and holding on, while the various contents of the cargo brought were handed on board. This operation had to be performed most dexterously; for, one moment, the little craft would be almost on a level with the ship’s bulwarks, while the next she would be thirty feet below, as the billowy surface of the sea sank below her keel.

Eric was beside the skipper, checking the quantities of provisions which had been accurately calculated beforehand, for the Tristaners showed a keen eye to business and weighed everything they bartered for the whaler’s goods, when one of the men hailed him. This was the identical young fellow of whom he had spoken to Fritz when first expounding his projected scheme for going sealing to Inaccessible Island, and who, he mentioned besides, had told him all about the place. Indeed, he had actually suggested his going there. Eric had wondered much at not having come across this young man on the previous day when they had visited the settlement, although he looked about for him, so he was doubly pleased to see him now.

“Hullo!” cried out this Tristaner to the young German. “So you are back again, eh?”

“Yes,” said Eric. “Come aboard a moment; I want to speak to you.”

“All right,” exclaimed the other, who was a fine, stalwart young fellow, with jet-black hair and a bronzed face that appeared to be more tanned by the weather than owing its hue to coloured blood; when, in a jiffy, he had swung himself into the chains by the rope attached to the boat’s bows and was by Eric’s side on the deck of thePilot’s Bride, his face all over smiles.

“You’re the very chap I was wanting to see,” said Eric, shaking hands with him cordially. “I was puzzled to know what had become of you yesterday. I did not see you anywhere.”

“I was away up the mountain, gathering grass,” replied the young fellow. “So, you’ve returned here, as you said you would, early in the year?”

“You told me such fine accounts of the fishing,” retorted Eric with a laugh, “that, really, I couldn’t stop away. I want to talk to you about it again now. This is my brother,” he added, introducing Fritz.

“Glad to know him,” said the Tristaner, bowing politely—indeed, the manners of all the islanders struck Fritz as being more polished than what he had observed in so-called civilised society. “Is he going to join you in settling on Inaccessible Island?”

“Yes,” replied Eric. “He and I have determined to start sealing there. We have come from America on purpose. Is there anything more you can tell us about it?”

“Have you got provisions to last you a year at the least? You must calculate to hold out so long, for no ship may be able to visit you earlier and you cannot count on procuring much food on the island.”

“Oh, yes; we’ve got plenty of grub,” said Eric, using the sailor’s term for food.

“And the things besides that I told you would be necessary?”

“You may be certain of that,” replied Eric. “The only thing I see that we’ll have any difficulty about will be in rigging up a house. I’m sure that Fritz and I will never be able to build a substantial shanty like one of those you have here in your island.”

“No, perhaps not,” said the young fellow, smiling. “You see, when we are going to run up a house, we all join together and lend a hand, which makes it easy work for us. It would be impossible for one or two men—or many more, indeed. I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you, though. If the captain of your ship here will promise to bring me back again to Tristan, I will go over there with you for a couple of days or so, to see you comfortably fixed up, as you Americans say, at Inaccessible Island, before you and your brother are left to yourselves.”

“Agreed!” exclaimed Eric joyfully. “I will ask the skipper at once.”

To dart across the deck to where Captain Brown was now standing by the open hatchway, overseeing the provisions being passed down into the ship’s hold, was, for the sailor lad, but the work of a moment!

“Oh, Captain Brown,”—commenced Eric breathlessly, his excitement almost stopping his speech for a second.

“Waall, what’s all the muss about?” said the old skipper, turning round and scanning the lad’s eager face. “Do you an’ your brother want to back out o’ the venture naow? I saw you talkin’ to thet Tristaner you met here with me in the spring.”

“Back out of the project?” repeated Eric very indignantly. “Give up my pet plan, when everything is turning more and more in favour of it, captain? I should think not, indeed!”

“Then, what’s the matter?” asked the skipper.

“I want you to grant me a favour,” said Eric, hesitating a bit as the other looked at him steadfastly, a half-smile, half-grin on his weather-beaten countenance.

“Thought sunthin’ wer up!” ejaculated the skipper. “Waall, what’s this durned favour o’ your’n?” he added in his good-natured way. “Spit it out, sonny, an’ don’t make sich a mealy mouth of it!”

“This Tristaner—young Glass, you recollect him, don’t you, captain?” said Eric, proceeding with his request—“says he’ll come with us and help to build our cabin for us at Inaccessible Island, and settle us—”

“Show you the ropes, in fact, hey?” interrupted the skipper.

“Yes,” continued Eric. “He agrees to stop a day or two with us, till we feel at home, so to speak, if you will undertake to bring him back again and land him at Tristan before you go on to the Cape.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the skipper, giving expression to a long, low whistle from between his closed teeth. “Thet’s the ticket, is it? Waall, I guess I don’t mind doin’ it to oblige you an’ your brother, though it’ll take me a main heap out o’ my way coastin’ up haar ag’in!”

“Thank you; oh, thank you, captain,” said Eric, quite delighted with this promise; and he rushed back across the deck to tell the others the good news.

While the young Tristaner was explaining matters to his comrades in the boat—from which all the stores had now been removed that had been brought off from the island and a few extra articles put in, which Captain Brown had made them a present of, as “boot” to the bargain of barter—the wind began to spring up in gusts, causing the ship’s sails to flap ominously against the masts.

“Guess you’d better be off,” cried the skipper, coming to the side, where the two brothers and the young Tristaner who was going to accompany them stood leaning over, having a parting palaver with those in the boat below. “The breeze is risin’, an’ if you don’t kinder care ’bout startin’, I reckon we must. Shove off thaar!”

“All right,” sang out one of the islanders, casting off the rope which attached them still to the ship. “Good-bye, and mind you bring our countryman back safe.”

“You bet,” shouted the skipper. “I’ll take care o’ him as if he wer my own kin. Now, Eric,” he added, “you’ve got to tend your duties to the last aboard, you know; away aft with you an’ see to the mizzen sheets. All hands make sail!”

The topsails were dropped at the same moment and sheeted home, while the jib was hoisted; and the ship, paying off, forged slowly up to her anchor.

“Now, men,” sang out Captain Brown sharply. “Put your heart into thet windlass thaar, an’ git the cable in! It’s comin’ on to blow hard, an’ if you don’t look smart we’ll never git out of this durned bay in time!”

Clink, clank, went round the unwieldy machine, as the crew heaved with a will, their movements quickened by the urgency of getting under weigh without delay, and each man exerting the strength of two.

“Heave away, men!” chorussed the mate, standing over them and lending his voice to their harmonious chant. “Heave! Yo ho, heave!”

A few hearty and long pulls, and then the anchor showed its stock.

“Hook cat!” shouted the mate; whereupon, the fall being stretched along the deck, all hands laid hold.

“Hurrah, up with her now, altogether!” came the next cry; and then, the anchor was bowsed up to the cathead to the lively chorus that rang through the ship, the men walking away with the fall as if it had no weight attached to it. The yards were now braced round and thePilot’s Bridebegan to beat out of the bay against the head wind, which was now blowing right on to the shore.

“Guess we aren’t a bit too soon,” said the skipper, when the vessel, after her second tack to starboard, just cleared Herald Point. “If we’d stopped much longer, we’d been forced to stop altogether, I reckon!”

“Was there any danger?” asked Fritz innocently.

“Yes, mister; there’s allers danger to a shep with a gale comin’ on an’ a nasty shore under her lee. There’s nothin’ like the open sea for safety! When you can’t come to an anchor in a safe harbour, the best thing is to up cable an’ cut and run, say I!”

Inaccessible Island was only about eighteen miles distant from Tristan; but, as it lay to the south-west of that island and the wind blew strongly from almost the same quarter, thePilot’s Bridehad to make a couple of long tacks before she could approach sufficiently near for Fritz to see the spot where he and his brother had elected to pass so many weary months of solitary exile.

As the ship beat to windward, passing the island twice on either tack, he was able to notice what a bare, inhospitable-looking place it was.

Its structure seemed pretty much the same as that of Tristan, with the exception that the snow-white cone projecting into the clouds, which was the most noticeable feature in the latter island, was here wanting; but, a wall of volcanic rocks, about the same height as the cliff of Tristan d’Acunha, entirely surrounded the desolate spot, falling for the most part sheer into the sea and only sloping, as far as could be seen from the distance the ship was off, sufficiently on one side to allow of any access to the top. Against this impenetrable, adamantine barrier, on the west, the heavy rolling sea that had travelled all the way from Cape Horn was breaking with a loud din, sending columns of spray flying over almost the highest peaks and making the scene grand but awesome at the same time.

“Well might it be called Inaccessible Island!” exclaimed Fritz, gazing intently at the threatening cliffs and cruel surge.

“Yes, sirree, it kinder skearts one to look at it, don’t it now, hey?”

“I should think it more dangerous to approach than Tristan?” said Fritz presently.

“I rayther guess so, mister,” replied the skipper. “I rec’lect readin’, when I was a b’y, of the wreck of a big East Indyman here bound fur Bombay. She wer called theBlenden Hall, an’ I ken call to mind, though it must be nigh fifty year ago, the hull yarn as to how she wer lost.”

“Do you?” said Fritz. “I should like to hear about it.”

“Waall, here goes, I reckon. You see as how there wer several ladies aboard, an’ it wer the plight they wer put in thet made me ’member it all. It wer in the month of July thet it happen’d, an’ the vessel, as I said afore, wer bound to Bombay. The weather bein’ thick an’ the master funky about his latitudes, findin’ himself by observation near these islands, he detarmined to look for ’em, in order to get a sight of ’em an’ correct his reck’nin’. I guess he hed too much of a sight soon; fur, a thick fog shortly shut out everythin’ from gaze, an’ lookin’ over the side he found the vessel in the midst of a lot o’ floatin’ weed. The helm wer put down, but by reason of light winds and a heavy swell settin’ in to the shore, the same as you just now saw at Tristan, the shep’s head couldn’t be got to come round. Breakers were now heard ahead, so the jolly-boat wer lowered with a tow-line to heave the bows round; but it wer of no use, as the wind hed failed entirely an’ the swell was a-drivin’ the shep on to the rocks. An anchor wer then let go, but the depth of water didn’t allow it to take hold, so, they lowered the cutter to help tow the shep’s head round, along with the jolly-boat, when all of a sudden she struck. The fog wer so thick by then, thet those on board couldn’t see the boats alongside, much less the shore. Howsomedever, they cut away the masts, to ease the vessel an’ stop her grindin’ on the rocks. Soon arter this, the fog lifted when those on board were frit by seein’ right over their heads apparently, those very terrific-lookin’ cliffs you see in front, just thaar—only thet they wer close into ’em, not more nor half a cable’s length off, an’ the heavy seas, sich as you ken now see runnin’ up the face of the rocky wall thaar, wer breaking boldly right over the shep—”

“And,” interrupted Fritz, “what happened then?”

“What could you expect?” replied the skipper. “I guess she wer beaten into matchwood in five minutes; although, won’erful to say, the hull of the passengers, ladies an’ all, wer got ashore safely, only one man bein’ drowned—an’ it sarved him right, as he was one of the crew who tried to escape when the shep first struck, an’ leave all the rest to perish! They wer all got to land by a hawser rigged from a peak of projectin’ rock to a bit of the wreck; an’ the ladies, I read, mister, an’ all o’ them, lived from July to November on penguins an’ seal flesh, which they cooked in part of an iron buoy that they sawed in half fur a kittle, shelterin’ themselves from the cold in tents thet they made out of the vessel’s sails. I reckon, mister, you’ll be kinder better provided fur an’ lodged, hey?”

“Yes, thanks to your kindness,” said Fritz; “but the island seems completely encompassed by this rocky wall. I don’t see where and how we’re going to land and get our things on shore!”

“Don’t you?” chuckled the skipper. “I guess you’ll soon see how we’ll fix it.”

Presently, Fritz’s doubts were solved.

When thePilot’s Bridehad worked her way well to windward of the island, the captain fetched down towards the eastern side, where, on rounding a point, a narrow bay lay right before the ship, quite sheltered from the rough swell and wind that reigned paramount on the other side of the coast, storming and beating against the wall-like cliffs in blind fury!

Here, it was as calm as a mill pond; so, the ship was brought to an anchor right in front of a pretty little waterfall that leaped its way by a series of cascades from the cliff above to a level plateau at the base, where a narrow belt of low ground extended for about a mile in front of the bay, its seaweed face being bordered by a broad sandy beach of black sand.

“Oh, that is pretty!” exclaimed Fritz and Eric, almost together in one breath. “It is like the falls of the Staubbach at home in dear Germany.”

“I don’t know nary anythin’ ’bout thet,” said the skipper laconically, for the brothers spoke for the moment in their native tongue, carried away by old associations; “but I guess we’ll hev to see ’bout gettin’ your fixins ashore pretty sharp, fur the wind may change agin, an’ then I’d hev to cut an’ leave you.”

“All right, captain, we’re quite at your service,” said Fritz; and, a boat being lowered, the various packages containing the brothers’ personal belongings, as well as the supply of provisions furnished by the skipper from the ship’s stores for their use, were put on board, after which the two then jumped in accompanied by Captain Brown and the young Tristaner, the little party being rowed ashore by four seamen whom the skipper had ordered to assist.

As soon as they landed, the things were carried up the beach; when, the seamen bearing a hand,—directed by Captain Brown, who seemed quite used to the sort of work,—all devoted their efforts towards building a rough sort of house, which would serve the adventurous brothers for a temporary habitation until they could make themselves more comfortable.

Young Glass selected the best site for the building; and the skipper having caused a lot of timber to be placed in the boat, a makeshift cottage was hastily run up, the walls being of blocks of stone without and of wood inside. The islander then thatched this neatly with tussock-grass, which grew all up the face of the cliff, where, as he showed the brothers, it could be utilised as a sort of ladder to gain the plateau on top—on which, he also told Fritz and Eric, they would find droves of wild hogs and a flock of goats that would come in handy for food when their provisions failed.

The Tristaner had promised to remain with them as long as Captain Brown would stay with thePilot’s Bride, that is, for a week or so, if the weather was favourable. However, quite unexpectedly, towards afternoon on the next day—when the cottage was completed, it is true, but they had not as yet had time to explore the island in company with young Glass, in order to be familiarised as to the best spots for sealing, planting their potatoes and vegetable seeds, and so on—the wind shifted again round to the south-east; and no sooner was this change apparent than the skipper had to weigh anchor without a moment’s delay, when of course the Tristaner had to embark, or else submit to share the young crusoes’ exile.

Captain Brown had remained on shore with them all the time from their landing, and he appeared now very loth to leave them at the last. Really, as they went down with him to the whale-boat in which they had come ashore, there were tears in the old man’s eyes, which he tried vainly to hide.

“Pooh!” he exclaimed, stamping his foot vigorously. “It’s all them dratted ’skeaters or flies, or sunthin’s got inter my durned old optics as I can’t see! Hail the ship, Eric my lad, an’ tell ’em to send a boat to take us off, will you, sonny?”

“But the whale-boat that we landed in is here, captain,” said Eric, thinking the skipper had forgotten all about it.

“Nary you mind thet, my lad,” shouted the good-hearted old man; “I’m goin’ to leave thet with you fur a present, b’ys, in case you sh’u’d get tired an’ want ter shift your quarters to Tristan some day. It’s allers best to be purvided with the means of escape, you know, in case of the worst, for thePilot’s Bridemight get wracked down ’mongst the islands Kerguelen way, an’ no shep might ever call to take you off.”

“Oh, captain, how can we thank you!” exclaimed Fritz, overcome with emotion at the skipper’s thoughtfulness. “Still, you will come and look us up next year should all be well with you, eh?”

“You bet on thet,” replied the worthy old man. “I guess you’ll see me next fall, if I’m in the land o’ the livin’!”

“And you’ll call to see if there are any letters for us at the Cape of Good Hope, won’t you? I told our people at home to write there, on the chance of their communications being forwarded on.”

“I’ll bring ’em sure, if there’s any,” replied the skipper; and, by this time, a second boat having been sent off from the ship, in which the seamen who had pulled the first whale-boat ashore now took their places, along with the Tristan islander, it only remained for the kind old captain to embark—and then, the brothers would be crusoes indeed!

“Good-bye, an’ God bless you, my b’ys,” he said, wringing first the hand of Fritz and then that of Eric, in a grip that almost crushed every feeling in those respective members. “Good-bye, my lads; but keep a stiff upper lip an’ you’ll do! Trust in providence, too, an’ look arter the seals, so as to be ready with a good cargo when I come back next fall!”

“Good-bye, good old friend,” repeated Fritz, wringing his honest hand again on the old man stepping into the boat, the crew of which raised a parting cheer as it glided away to the ship, leaving the young crusoes behind on the beach!

They watched with eager eyes the sails being dropped and the anchor weighed, thePilot’s Bridesoon after spreading her canvas and making way out of the little bay.

Then, when she got into the offing, the skipper, as a final adieu, backed the vessel’s main-topsail and dipped her colours three times, firing the bow gun at the same time.

It was a nautical farewell from their whilom comrades: and then the brothers were left alone!

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