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- led to the capstan or windlass, so that not a yard was braced or a sail
set without the assistance of machinery.
Her hull was encrusted with barnacles, which completely encased her.
Three pet sharks followed in her wake, and every day came alongside to
regale themselves from the contents of the cook’s bucket, which were
pitched over to them. A vast shoal of bonetas and albicores always kept
her company.
Such was the account I heard of this vessel and the remembrance of it
always haunted me; what eventually became of her I never learned; at
any rate: he never reached home, and I suppose she is still regularly
tacking twice in the twenty-four hours somewhere off Desolate Island, or
the Devil’s-Tail Peak.
Having said thus much touching the usual length of these voyages, when I
inform the reader that ours had as it were just commenced, we being only
fifteen months out, and even at that time hailed as a late arrival and
boarded for news, he will readily perceive that there was little to
encourage one in looking forward to the future, especially as I had
always had a presentiment that we should make an unfortunate voyage, and
our experience so far had justified the expectation.
I may here state, and on my faith as an honest man, that though more
than three years have elapsed since I left this same identical vessel,
she still continues; in the Pacific, and but a few days since I saw
her reported in the papers as having touched at the Sandwich Islands
previous to going on the coast of Japan.
But to return to my narrative. Placed in these circumstances then, with
no prospect of matters mending if I remained aboard the Dolly, I at once
made up my mind to leave her: to be sure it was rather an inglorious
thing to steal away privily from those at whose hands I had received
wrongs and outrages that I could not resent; but how was such a course
to be avoided when it was the only alternative left me? Having made
up my mind, I proceeded to acquire all the information I could obtain
relating to the island and its inhabitants, with a view of shaping my
plans of escape accordingly. The result of these inquiries I will now
state, in order that the ensuing narrative may be the better understood.
The bay of Nukuheva in which we were then lying is an expanse of
water not unlike in figure the space included within the limits of a
horse-shoe. It is, perhaps, nine miles in circumference. You approach
it from the sea by a narrow entrance, flanked on each side by two small
twin islets which soar conically to the height of some five hundred
feet. From these the shore recedes on both hands, and describes a deep
semicircle.
From the verge of the water the land rises uniformly on all sides, with
green and sloping acclivities, until from gently rolling hill-sides
and moderate elevations it insensibly swells into lofty and majestic
heights, whose blue outlines, ranged all around, close in the view. The
beautiful aspect of the shore is heightened by deep and romantic
glens, which come down to it at almost equal distances, all apparently
radiating from a common centre, and the upper extremities of which are
lost to the eye beneath the shadow of the mountains. Down each of these
little valleys flows a clear stream, here and there assuming the form
of a slender cascade, then stealing invisibly along until it bursts
upon the sight again in larger and more noisy waterfalls, and at last
demurely wanders along to the sea.
The houses of the natives, constructed of the yellow bamboo, tastefully
twisted together in a kind of wicker-work, and thatched with the long
tapering leaves of the palmetto, are scattered irregularly along these
valleys beneath the shady branches of the cocoanut trees.
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