20

STANDING OUT TO SEA.

drove the blood with an accelerated current through my veins. Horace Walpole tells us, that his Duke of Newcastle was in the habit of saying-"On Friday next, with the blessing of Providence, I propose to get drunk;" of course, I made in my mind no such proposition; but I was equally resolved to feast sumptuously that day!

Man proposes. Ascending to the deck, I learned that we were not to enter the harbor after all! The wind, it seemed, had chopped round while we were standing out for the island, and now blew fair for Madeira. The captain said it would be sinful not to take advantage of the only fair wind we had had, and therefore bent his course once more for the north of the channel.

I wilted. Chops from that sweet and small mutton, and tomatoes enlivened with cayenne! How I sympathized with old Shylock—“I never felt the curse till now!"

But I bore the disappointment, cruel as it was, without unmanly repining. I had been blessed-with expectation. I was on my feet; and the very exertion I had made to overcome the languor of my nerves exhilarated and braced them. I breathed freer and deeper.

Two days longer yet we tacked and beat and shipped seas in the British channel, making scarce perceptible progress. On the morning of the 8th, more than a week after our departure from Southampton, we bade final adieu to the channel, and stood fairly out to sea.

We escaped the storms of the dreaded Bay of Biscay, and over the broad Atlantic made three days of fair sailing. Then we encountered calms or adverse winds, and for four days gained but little on our journey. The sailors told me that the unusual delay and disasters of our voyage were to be attributed to our starting on Friday. But not one of them could tell

GRAND SPECTACLE.

21

me, why Friday, of all the days of the week, should be pronounced unlucky. With them the superstition has survived the knowledge of its origin.

In spite of omens or disasters, on the evening of the third Sunday of our departure, we made the little island of Porto Santo, about forty miles from Madeira, historically famous as having been once the residence of the discoverer of America, Christopher Columbus. There are few emotions more to be envied, as there are few less alloyed, than the rapture with which the tempest-tost sea-sickened, cadaverous voyager hails the first sight of land. Heliogabalus would have paid a large sum for this sensation rather than never to have experienced it. The stench of bilge-water, forced companionship, sea-sickness, and all the deprivations we had undergone, seemed lost in this new emotion.

We had besides, at the close of this day, a most magnificent spectacle to exhilarate us. Never was the process of sun-setting (to use a theatrical expression) better "got up." The mise en scène was superb. I had never witnessed a grander sky. The glorious orb of day went down upon the western waters in noon-day splendor. The attendant clouds caught and reflected the dazzling luster of the retiring monarch, arrayed in shapes that had the outer forms of reality. Mosques with domes and minarets, castles with towers and battlements, mountains and crags, blazing in burnished gold, were boldly defined upon the sky in no seeming and unsubstantial pageantry.

The scene alas! was transitory. Around the setting sun these "gorgeous palaces, these solemn temples" lingered awhile; but, with their architect, disappeared. They died on the rich sky; they faded to the enraptured gaze, and were soon forever lost but to the revivifying imagination.

22

DANGER OF FAMINE.

Filled with this scene and the peaceful twilight that fell upon the ocean, we retired, in the full hope of reaching an anchorage early in the morning.

Again to be disappointed! For storms ushered in the coming day. Every wind seemed conspired against us. Eurus and Notus, and the stormy Afric driving the wet tempest before them, raged against us; and our fated vessel, lifted up at one time, as it were, to the skies themselves, and at another dashed down to the lowest abyss, was the unresisting sport of the elements. Our condition, contrasted with our hopes of the previous evening, desolated our hearts. Some took to prayers, some to strong liquors-I, to bed. "Grief," says Sterne, "naturally seeks a horizontal position."

Our patience was exhausted; so were our provisions. The beef had been early washed overboard; the mutton had been devoured before one half the distance ; and the poultry had followed hard upon it. The passage had been calculated at ten days, and we were now in our eighteenth! A veteran goose, spared a long time for its longevity, had scantily furnished the previous dinner. The fresh water had given out, the soda a week before, and our stomachs refused the ale. Salt beef, and peradventure ham and pork, remained; but with what could we wash or hold them down?

Beating about, tacking incessantly, and looking well to compass and to sails, we held our own through the dreary day; and with the setting sun, made out to reach the Disertas, three sister islets which rise fifteen hundred perpendicular feet from the ocean, directly opposite the north-eastern extremity of Madeira, about twenty miles from Funchal. They are uninhabited, save by the goats that browse the grass of the penurious rocks. We hugged these islands all night long, and were glad to find in their sheltering arms an es

cape from the ungoverned tempest, which raged with untired animosity the whole succeeding day. The seaworthiness of our vessel was sorely tried, as well as the skill of the captain and endurance of the crew. How much gratitude do we promise these in such perils! and how soon after is such promise forgotten!

We

Our vessel plowed the sea in useless furrows. could not anchor nor advance one tenable rod toward

our landing station. The captain feared our only hope was upon the open ocean. With the wind we had, Funchal Bay, even if attained, could afford us no protection. Vessels riding at anchor there had slipped their cables, as we could distinguish, and run out to

sea.

We could see the inhabitants crowding the beach, the house-tops, and the rocky cliffs We felt they knew our danger, and could assist us nothing. In our vexed career we approached sufficiently close to distinguish the blossomed trees, the varied flowers, and ripened fruit; and as we turned our backs upon this opening Paradise, we feared the doom of the disobedient Hebrew-fated to see, but never to set foot upon the land overflowing with milk and honey, wine and oil.

But the next sun broke and dispersed the clouds. The wind moderated, and the sea subsided. We came on deck and breathed. The captain bade us hope. By noon, the wind was right; at two, it was deemed safe to let go the anchor, about half a mile from the shore, in the open roadstead-the nearest anchorage with safety. Visited by the Health and Custom house officers to see that we brought neither epidemic nor tobacco, we immediately disembarked, escaping the perils of the sea, the unhealthy closeness of our wooden world, and starvation. I was the first of the passengers to reach "the sure and firm-set earth.”

CHAPTER II.

SEASON OF MADEIRA AND ENGLAND CONTRASTED-AGREEABILITIES OF THE ISLAND-ITS RESOURCES-CITY OF FUNCHAL-THE FAIR SEX.

Or the many kind dispensations of Providence, for which we can never express sufficient gratitude, not the least is that happy faculty of the mind which enables us, in our first moments of enjoyment, to erase from the memory all impressions of previous miseries. A warm bath, change of linen, and the admirable cuisine of the American Consul, whose guest I became on landing, made me soon oblivious of all the désagréements, delay, and dangers of the voyage. These became, in the hour that succeeded dinner, as shadowy and indefinable as myths.

We had left England in the midst of autumn. All was in the sere and yellow leaf. The trees had lost their foliage, and the fields their verdure. Cold winds and cheerless skies ushered in and closed melancholy days-our voyage had been long and stormy—on our arrival, what a change! "Winter has become summer; the naked trees which we left are exchanged for luxuriant and varied foliage; snow and frost for warmth and splendor; the scenery of the temperate zone for the profusion and magnificence of the tropics: a bright blue sky; a glowing sun; hills covered with vines; a deep blue sea; a picturesque and novel cos. tume; all meet and delight the eye just at the precise