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On the 1st of March our adventurous traveller, having resolved on putting a girdle round about the world, took her passage for China in the Dutch barque Lootpuit, Captain Van Wyk Jurianse. On the 26th of April, her eyes were gladdened with a view of the "island-Eden" of the Southern seas, Tahiti, the largest and most beautiful of the Society group.
"But hang on to me! There are some steps round the corner, and they may be slippery. We'll soon be down now, and there's not a soul anywhere. Look! There's a fairy barque waiting for us!" She caught sight of a white skiff, lying in the water close to the bank.
Ships have no ears, I repeat, though, indeed, I think I have known ships who really seemed to have had eyes, or else I cannot understand on what ground a certain 1,000-ton barque of my acquaintance on one particular occasion refused to answer her helm, thereby saving a frightful smash to two ships and to a very good man's reputation.
"What is this ship?" I asked after a pause. "She a'n't a ship at all, my boy she be a barque." "But what is she?" "Why, a'n't I told you she be a barque." "But what sort, I want to know?" "Why, in course, a regular rigged barque ye see if she were a ship the mizen-mast yonder 'ud be carryin' squares'ls aloft, which she don't do as ye see therefore she's a barque and not a ship."
The door was not locked, and a good many empty boxes were lying around on the floor with splintered lids, as though they had been smashed open in a hurry which looked as though the pantry had been levied on suddenly to provision the boats after the wreck occurred, and so made me hope that the captain and his wife and baby had got away from the barque alive.
When he came to the surface of the water he found himself floating among the debris of the quarter-boat, which, when the spanker-boom guy parted and the heavy spar swung over to leeward, had swept the after-davit out of its socket and let the boat hang, stern down, by the for'ard fall, until the labouring old barque, raising her stern high out of the water, smashed down upon it as it dragged under her counter and tore out the for'ard ringbolt.
So then after that they drifted on to the wreck off Daunt's rock, wreck of that illfated Norwegian barque nobody could think of her name for the moment till the jarvey who had really quite a look of Henry Campbell remembered it Palme on Booterstown strand. Then someone said something about the case of the s. s.
I was out of breath, but could not rest a moment, since the least relaxation would have let the boat slip a far way back, and this would have been a distance hard to recover. M M lay still and silent, for she perceived I had no breath wherewith to answer her. I began to give ourselves up as lost. At that instant I saw in the distance a barque coming swiftly towards us. What a piece of luck!
She saw that the later had escaped that it would be useless to follow her out into the Atlantic and she was constrained, therefore, to go in search of other slavers that might prove less fleet than the Pandora. Under these circumstances the chase was abandoned, and the barque was now free to traverse the wide Atlantic ocean, and deliver her human cargo on the Brazilian shores.
This, however, was not so formidable a matter as it at first sight appeared; for, the hold being tightly packed with cargo, the water could only get into the interstices, and a comparatively small quantity would consequently show a large rise in the pump-well. A strong gang was now sent on board the barque, with the chief-mate in command; and the pumps were at once manned.
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