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I made no doubt that here was the 'devil's seat' alluded to in the MS., and now I seemed to grasp the full secret of the riddle. "The 'good glass, I knew, could have reference to nothing but a telescope; for the word 'glass' is rarely employed in any other sense by seamen.
"Un brûlot! un brûlot! a fire-ship!" exclaimed twenty voices together, the horror that mingled in the cries proclaiming the extent of a danger which is, perhaps, the most terrific that seamen can encounter. But the voice of Raoul Yvard was not among them. The moment his eye caught the first glimpse of the flames he disappeared from the bowsprit. He might have been absent about twenty seconds.
How much cause have seamen for thankfulness to one who has provided them with such a chart! their lives frequently depend on the correctness of these guides; and an erroneous one may be worse than none at all.
When I came on board, the merchants and seamen flocked about me to hear how I came into that deserted island, in a region where cannibal giants and serpents were known by the oldest sailors to abound. When I stood before the captain in rags, he gave me one of his own suits.
Flint and Amblen were making fast to the nearest schooner, and a couple of seamen had been sent on shore to cast off the fasts which held her to the wharf. This was the work of but a moment, and the two men returned to the steamer; but they were closely followed by two men, one of whom stepped on the deck of the schooner.
The people again expressed their fears that they had passed between two islands; but after the lapse of another day the ships were visited by numberless birds, and various indications of land became more numerous. Full of hope, the seamen ascended the rigging, and were continually crying out that they saw land.
The commons continued the same number of seamen and land-forces for the ensuing year, which had been granted in the last session, and made suitable provision for all the exigences of the state.
The number of these miserable objects were many, and I know so many that perished thus, and so exactly where, that I believe I could go to the very place and dig their bones up still; for the country people would go and dig a hole at a distance from them, and then with long poles, and hooks at the end of them, drag the bodies into these pits, and then throw the earth in from as far as they could cast it, to cover them, taking notice how the wind blew, and so coming on that side which the seamen call to windward, that the scent of the bodies might blow from them; and thus great numbers went out of the world who were never known, or any account of them taken, as well within the bills of mortality as without.
On the other hand, the firm glance of his steel-blue eyes and the slightly sneering expression of his lower lip corrected whatever there might be of effeminate in his general appearance. As a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron, the young nobleman indulged occasionally in a cruise on his swift yacht Puck, built of teak, fitted like a boudoir, and manned by a small crew of picked seamen.
The poor lads toil hard, live hard, and they certainly feed hard; but, with all due respect, it must be said also that they mostly pray hard; and, if any one of the cynical division had been among the seamen during that awful time five years ago, he would have seen that among the sea-toilers at least the "glad" season is glad in something more than name for the gladness is serious.
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