“Oh ho!” said he; “I’ve seen too much of them men to want to see ’em ’board a ship. If they can’t have their own way, they’ll play the d⸺l with you.”
As I still doubted, he said he would leave it to John, who was the oldest seaman aboard, and would know, if anybody did. John, to be sure, was the oldest, and at the same time the most ignorant, man in the ship; but I consented to have him called. The cook stated the matter to him, and John, as I anticipated, sided with the cook, and said that he himself had been in a ship where they had a headwind for a fortnight, and the captain found out at last that one of the men, whom he had had some hard words with a short time before, was a Fin, and immediately told him if he didn’t stop the headwind he would shut him down in the fore peak,79 and would not give him anything to eat. The Fin held out for a day and a half, when he could not stand it any longer, and did something or other which brought the wind round again, and they let him up.
“There,” said the cook, “what do you think o’ dat?”
I told him I had no doubt it was true, and that it would have been odd if the wind had not changed in fifteen days, Fin or no Fin.
“Oh,” says he, “go ’way! You think, ’cause you been to college, you know better than anybody. You know better than them as ’as seen it with their own eyes. You wait till you’ve been to sea as long as I have, and you’ll know.”
VII
Juan Fernandez—The Pacific.
We continued sailing along with a fair wind and fine weather until
Tuesday, Nov. 25th, when at daylight we saw the island of Juan Fernandez, directly ahead, rising like a deep blue cloud out of the sea. We were then probably nearly seventy miles from it; and so high and so blue did it appear, that I mistook it for a cloud, resting over the island, and looked for the island under it, until it gradually turned to a deader and greener color, and I could mark the inequalities upon its surface. At length we could distinguish trees and rocks; and by the afternoon, this beautiful island lay fairly before us, and we directed our course to the only harbor. Arriving at the entrance soon after sundown, we found a Chilean man-of-war brig, the only vessel, coming out. She hailed us, and an officer on board, whom we supposed to be an American, advised us to run in before night, and said that they were bound to Valparaiso. We ran immediately for the anchorage, but, owing to the winds which drew about the mountains and came to us in flaws from every point of the compass, we did not come to an anchor until nearly midnight. We had a boat ahead all the time that we were working in, and those aboard were continually bracing the yards about for every puff that struck us, until about 12 o’clock, when we came to in forty fathoms water, and our anchor struck bottom for the first time since we left Boston—one hundred and three days. We were then divided into three watches, and thus stood out the remainder of the night.
I was called on deck to stand my watch at about three in the morning, and I shall never forget the peculiar sensation which I experienced on finding myself once more surrounded by land, feeling the night breeze coming from off shore, and hearing the frogs and crickets. The mountains seemed almost to hang over us, and apparently from the very heart there came out, at regular intervals, a loud echoing sound, which affected me as hardly human. We saw no lights, and could hardly account for the sound, until the mate, who had been there before, told us that it was the “Alerta”80 of the Spanish soldiers, who were stationed over some convicts confined in caves nearly halfway up the mountain. At the expiration of my watch I went below, feeling not a little anxious for the day, that I might see more nearly, and perhaps tread upon, this romantic, I may almost say, classic island.81
When all hands were called it was nearly sunrise, and between that time and breakfast, although quite busy on board in getting up water casks, etc., I had a good view of the objects about me. The harbor was nearly landlocked, and at the head of it was a landing place, protected by a small breakwater of stones, upon which two large boats were hauled up, with a sentry standing over them. Near this was a variety of huts or cottages, nearly an hundred in number, the best of them built of mud and white washed, but the greater part only Robinson Crusoe like—of posts and branches of trees. The governor’s house, as it is called, was the most conspicuous, being large, with grated windows, plastered walls, and roof of red tiles; yet, like all the rest, only of one story. Near it was a small chapel, distinguished by a cross; and a long, low brown-looking building, surrounded by something like a palisade, from which an old and dingy-looking Chilean flag was flying. This, of course, was dignified by the title of Presidio.82 A sentinel was stationed at the chapel, another at the governor’s house, and a few soldiers armed with bayonets, looking rather ragged, with shoes out at the toes, were strolling about among the houses, or waiting at the landing place for our boat to come ashore.
The mountains were high, but not so overhanging as they appeared to be by starlight. They seemed to bear off
