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We went down to Hope Harbour early in the morning, having breakfasted by lamp-light, and as soon as all had gone on board the anchor was weighed. It was like a Malay anchor, made of wood, and a huge stone to keep it down. Favoured by the land-breeze, the Hope glided out of the harbour. Oliver said she appeared to sit beautifully on the water, and he thought she would be a fine sea-boat.
They were just beginning to discuss their probabilities of success, should it come to a hand-to-hand fight with those three armed and unfatigued men, when a faint puff of warm air fanned their faces. "Thank God!" exclaimed George fervently, "thank God! there is the first puff of the land-breeze."
All day they sailed: at nightfall the pleasant land-breeze died, The blackening sky at midnight its starry lights denied, And, far and low, the thunder of tempest prophesied. Blotted out was all the coast-line, gone were rock and wood and sand; Grimly anxious stood the helmsman with the tiller in his hand, And questioned of the darkness what was sea and what was land.
It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the crimson fight were done; and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky, sun and whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness and such plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air, that it almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent valleys of the Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned sailor, had gone to sea, freighted with these vesper hymns.
Six second mates on six American ships watched curiously, doubtingly, and at last anxiously, as sails were dropped and yards mastheaded on board the Almena, and as she paid off from the mooring-buoy before the land-breeze and showed them her stern, sent six dinghies, which gave up the pursuit in a few minutes and mustered around the buoy, where a wastefully slipped shot of anchor-chain gave additional evidence that all was not right.
In summer, the air is cooled by a regular sea-breeze blowing from the cast, like that of the West-Indies. It begins in the forenoon, and increases with the heat of the day. It dies away about six or seven; and immediately after sun-set is succeeded by an agreeable land-breeze from the mountains.
This, the water being shallow, was not a long job, and a quarter of an hour later we were stealing noiselessly away down the lagoon; the land-breeze, which was rustling cheerily among the tree- tops, just reaching us in a languid zephyr, mingled now and again with fitful puffs, which sent us along at a speed of about three knots.
"You rather like the berth, I suppose?" suggested Havens. "Yes," said Loudon; "it seems odd, but I rather do." The good hours of the twenty-four drew on; the hateful, poisonous day-fly of Nukahiva was beginning to desist from its activity; the land-breeze came in refreshing draughts; and the club-men gathered together for the hour of absinthe.
You see the luxuriant foliage of the tropics, the dark-green waves curling on the coral beach, and the scarlet flamingoes that gather shell-fish in the marshes away off in the golden sunset. You hear the wild song of the Spanish fruit-man as he sculls his boat along the broken wharves, and are soothed into utter listlessness by the thousand perfumes that come off with the land-breeze.
By this time the cool air from the mountains began to descend, and, floating over the heated sea, it formed a light land-breeze that blew in an exactly contrary direction to that which, about the same hour, came off from the adjacent continent. There was no moon, but the night could not be called dark.
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