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The land-breezes at night alone proved regular, and it was at night that the occasional cutters and ketches slipped by, too eager to take advantage of the light winds to drop anchor for an hour. Then came the long-expected nor'wester. For eight days it raged, lulling at times to short durations of calm, then shifting a point or two and raging with renewed violence.
The land-breezes came very strong and chill, and the sea, like the air, was in perpetual bustle. The swell crowded into the narrow anchorage like sheep into a fold; broke all along both sides, high on the one, low on the other; kept a certain blowhole sounding and smoking like a cannon; and spent itself at last upon the beach.
The afternoon waned; the lobby thinned; the dowagers and their daughters asked for room keys and disappeared for siestas and more mysterious processes; children trailed off to rest; the hot land-breezes, dry and listless, stirred the lace curtains of the parlor but they remained on the plush divan, rapt as might have been Paolo and Francesca in their romance-imbued arbor.
With light land-breezes from W. by N. for a few hours in a morning, and sea-breezes from S.S.W. and S. we advanced to the westward but slowly. At noon on the 14th, we were between six and seven leagues from the land, which extended from N. by E. to S. 78 W.; we still saw smoke in many places by day, and fire by night, both upon the low land and the mountains beyond it.
We were this 19th day in latitude 21 degrees 42 minutes. The 20th we were in latitude 19 degrees 37 minutes and kept close on a wind to get sight of the land again, but could not yet see it. We had very fair weather, and though we were so far from the land as to be out of sight of it, yet we had the sea and land-breezes.
This gentleman had been long a prisoner among the Spaniards in this country, which he was well acquainted with, having travelled between Payta and Lima by land, on which occasion he had observed several rich towns, which made him conceive we might do something to purpose, by cruizing along the coast, as far as the island of Lobos, in lat. 7° S. I approved of this, as it was probable we might meet some of the Panama ships, which always keep well in with the land, in order to have the benefit of the land-breezes.
A strange name wakes up memories; the printed words scent the smoky atmosphere of to-day faintly, with the subtle and penetrating perfume as of land-breezes breathing through the starlight of bygone nights; a signal-fire gleams like a jewel on the high brow of a sombre cliff; great trees, the advanced sentries of immense forests, stand watchful and still over sleeping stretches of open water; a line of white surf thunders on an empty beach, the shallow water foams on the reefs; and green islets scattered through the calm of noonday lie upon the level of a polished sea like a handful of emeralds on a buckler of steel."
But at last good tidings came. "All hands up anchor, ahoy!" And bright and early in the morning up came our old iron, as the sun rose in the East. The land-breezes at Rio by which alone vessels may emerge from the bay is ever languid and faint. It comes from gardens of citrons and cloves, spiced with all the spices of the Tropic of Capricorn.
It was with much ado that we got out of it again; for it was now low-water, and there went a rough short sea on the bar; which however we passed over without any damage and went aboard. The next morning at five we weighed and stood alongshore to the eastward, making use of the sea and land-breezes.
We therefore ultimately came to the conclusion that, the weather being what it was, our friend the Yankee would shape a straight course for Cape Palmas, with the intention of then availing himself of the alternate sea and land-breezes to slip along the coast as far as the Congo that being the plan very largely followed by slavers on the eastward passage and that he would only be likely to deviate from that plan in the event of his actually discovering that he was pursued.
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