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It requires some seamanship to do it, and to come-to at your former moorings, without letting go another anchor. Captain Wilson was remarkable, among the sailors on the coast, for his skill in doing this; and our captain never let go a second anchor during all the time that I was with him.
"W'en I come-to to myself," continued Peter, on reaching this point in his narrative, "de fus' t'ing I t'ink was dat I'd been bu'sted. Den I look up, an' I sees our black cook. She's a nigger, like myself, only a she one. "`Hallo, Angelica! says I; `wass de matter? "`Matter! says she; `you's dead a'most, an' dey lef' you here wid me, wid strik orders to take care ob you.
We left the ship about noon, but, owing to a strong head wind, and a tide, which here runs four or five knots, did not get into the harbor, formed by two points of the island, where the boats lie, until sundown. No sooner had we come-to, than a strong south-easter, which had been threatening us all day, set in, with heavy rain and a chilly atmosphere.
Noon. The struggle against the current is hopeless in the death-like calm that prevails, and so we have come-to again with the kedge. Sunday, Nov. 29th. After five days of dead calm, we took the monsoon this morning at daylight, settling in lightly, and at 9 A.M. we got under way, and stood to the northward and westward. Thursday, Dec, 3rd.
"Not lubberly done," muttered Cap in a sort of soliloquy, "not over lubberly, though he should have put his helm a-starboard instead of a-port; for a vessel ought always to come-to with her head off shore, whether she is a league from the land or only a cable's length, since it has a careful look, and looks are something in this world."
At two the next morning we weighed with the land-wind at south, and stood out clear of the shoal; but before noon were obliged to come-to again in twenty-eight fathom, near a small island among those that are called the Thousand Islands, which we did not find laid down in any chart. Pulo Pare at this time bore E.N.E. distance between six and seven miles.
Well, I saw at last what whalers used to call 'the blink of the ice'; that is to say, its bright apparition or reflection in the sky when it is left behind, or not yet come-to. By this time I was in a region where a good many craft of various sorts were to be seen; I was continually meeting them; and not one did I omit to investigate, while many I boarded in the kayak or the larch-wood pram.
'If you come-to before daylight, thought the sergeant, 'I shall be surprised for one. From the various pockets of the slumbering carrier he gently collected the sum of seventeen shillings and eightpence sterling; and, getting once more into the cart, drove thoughtfully away. 'If I was exactly sure of where I was, it would be a good job, he reflected. 'Anyway, here's a corner.
The Italian ship had a crew of thirty men; nearly three times as many as the Alert, which was afterwards on the coast, and was of the same size; yet the Alert would get under weigh and come-to in half the time, and get two anchors, while they were all talking at once jabbering like a parcel of "Yahoos," and running about decks to find their cat-block.
One thing we tried, knowing that no food had passed his lips since the previous morning, and that was to get some little quantity of hot water, rum and molasses down his throat; for it seemed to us he might die from very lack of food; but though we worked with him for more than the half of an hour, we could not get him to come-to sufficiently to take anything, and without that we had fear of suffocating him.
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