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After midnight on the 3rd and 4th we had strong breezes of short duration from South-East, and although a hundred miles from the nearest land to windward, a fine kind of dust was found on the rigging, which, on examination by a microscope, proved to consist of sand and wood ashes.
We continued to close until 7, when the wind came out fresh at S.W., putting John again to windward. I can hardly tell what followed, there was so much manoeuvring and shifting of berths. Both squadrons were standing across the lake, the enemy being to windward, and a little astern of us.
Young, going over to look for himself, saw that it was so, and that the Yarmouth, 64, had hauled off to windward, where she lay with her main and mizzen topsails aback. Signals were then made to her, and to the Cornwall, 74, to come to closer engagement, they both being on the weather bow of the flagship.
And the ironical smile subtly softened to a glow of affection. Here, at least, was an illusion! Isabelle, watching these two, understood all the lines, the smile, the light cynicism the Windward Islands! She put her arms impulsively about the mother and the child, hugging them closely. Margaret looked up into her shining eyes and pressed her hand....
At it again they went, however, but the wind fell, and for several days they made but very little progress. Still they were going in the way they wanted, and that was something. For about a week they stood on thus, with the wind not only light but very scant. One afternoon Wasser's sharp eye discovered a sail to windward. Murray went aloft with his glass to have a look at her.
Brown was in command of the Abraham, with a sufficient crew, and Betts sent him to windward, outside of everything, to look after the enemy.
I looked astern: the rocks were to windward on our quarter, and we were safe. I thought at the time, that the ship, relieved of her courses, and again lifting over the waves, was not a bad similitude of the relief felt by us all at that moment; and, like her, we trembled as we panted with the sudden reaction, and felt the removal of the intense anxiety which oppressed our breasts.
The longboat had by this time drawn close in with the land, the island of Baru looming up black and clear-cut to windward, with the islets and their adjacent reef, now known as Rosario Islands, a short quarter of a mile broad on the weather bow, and a clump of hills on the main beyond, just beginning to outline themselves sharply against the lightening sky behind them.
These orders being executed, and the brig brought to the wind, she was hove to, with her head in the same direction as that of the speronara. That vessel could just be seen to windward, looking dark against the western sky, and far larger than she really was, slowly forging ahead, while a small boat could just be discerned traversing the intervening space.
We were indeed as it were embayed, and could not have made the least shift to have got off, if they had come directly to us; but, as it happened, somebody had informed them that we were in the Bay of Campeachy, and they went directly thither, by which we were not only free of them, but were so much to the windward of them, that they could not make any attempt upon us, though they had known we were there.
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