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Birds were an almost unknown race in Peru; and here even green things had departed, scarcely a tuft of blossom looking out on the face of the red and purple rock; and the exceeding stillness so awful, that even the boy-sailor scarce dared to speak above his breath.
There was but one thought that held out to me the slightest hope one course that appeared to be tolerably rational. It was this: I could bind myself to the captain for a long period. I could toil for him as a boy-sailor a cabin-boy a servant anything that would enable me to work off my debt.
So take a reef out o' your tongue, lad, an' fire away!" Notwithstanding the bizarrerie of manner in which the request was made, the boy-sailor hesitated not to comply with it; and turning himself round upon his knees, a movement imitated by all the others, he repeated that thanksgiving of the Church Service, which, though well-known, is fortunately only heard upon very unfrequent occasions.
They had no fear even to take my life, as will be proved by the incidents I am about to relate. One of the disagreeables which a boy-sailor encounters on first going to sea is the being compelled to mount up "aloft."
On that day in particular, after the fearful shock they had all sustained, the young Portuguese girl had appeared, at least, in the eyes of little William, more enfeebled than ever; and the boy-sailor had gone to sleep under a sad foreboding that she would be the first to succumb, and that soon, to the hardships they were called upon to encounter.
It was a spectacle to startle the most experienced mariner, and call forth the keenest alarm, a sight to suggest the double interrogatory, "Is it a phantom ship, or a ship on fire?" In making the observations above detailed, the boy-sailor had been occupied scarce ten seconds of time, only while his eye took in the singular spectacle thus abruptly brought before it.
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