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Again, on the 11th of October, 1847, Mr. Dawes, an exceptionally keen observer, distinctly saw a star of the tenth magnitude through the exact centre of a comet discovered on the first of that month by Maria Mitchell of Nantucket.
And, by the way, it was strange to hear Tom speak of America, when the poor fellow had been all the way round Cape Horn and back, and had seen nothing but Nantucket. A map of the world, which I once showed them, kept their attention for hours; those who knew how to read pointing out the places and referring to me for the distances. I remember being much amused with a question which Hope asked me.
This stretch of bars and deeper waters between, roughly triangular in form with its apex at the north, lies along the western edge of the South Channel, extending S. and SE. from the southern end of Cape Cod and Nantucket Island. From Monomoy Point to Rogers Fishing Ground, on the eastern edge of Phelps Bank, it is SSE. 80 miles.
Some accident might have happened to him but I could think of none which would account for his suffering me to remain so long a prisoner, except, indeed, his having suddenly died or fallen overboard, and upon this idea I could not dwell with any degree of patience. It was possible that we had been baffled by head winds, and were still in the near vicinity of Nantucket.
They took it in leisurely fashion, by a different route from the one they had taken in the morning, and with frequent haltings to gather berries, mosses, lichens, grasses, and strange beautiful flowers; or to gaze with delighted eyes upon the bare brown hills purpling in the light of the setting sun, and the rapidly darkening vales; Sankaty lighthouse, with the sea rolling beyond, on the one hand, and on the other the quieter waters of the harbor, with the white houses and spires of Nantucket Town half encircling it.
"It would gratify me," said Mr. Mitchell, "that this generous monarch should know that there is a love of science even in this, to him, remote corner of the earth." The medal was at last awarded, and the woman astronomer of Nantucket found herself in the scientific journals and in the press as the discoverer of "Miss Mitchell's Comet."
The life-savers add to this time-limit by using a specially built wagon, with large wheels and a body considerably elevated. "Well, there now!" exclaimed the lady from Nantucket, as Daniel splashingly emerged on the other side. "I thought I'd done about everything a body could do with salt water, but I never went ridin' in it afore."
No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, the Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London, put in at the Shetland Islands, to receive the full complement of their crew. Upon the passage homewards, they drop them there again.
In September the Navy Department sent the steam frigate Guerrière to bring the admiral's body to New York. This ship running aground on Nantucket Shoal, the remains were transferred to another vessel and so conveyed to the city.
As the birds cower when the shadow of the hawk falls athwart the field, or as the jungle folk crouch and shiver when the coughing cry of the tiger is heard in the night-time, so through all the busy world of ships, from the whalers of Nantucket to the tobacco ships of Charleston, and from the Spanish supply ships of Cadiz to the sugar merchants of the Main, there spread the rumour of the black curse of the ocean.
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