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Updated: May 4, 2025
I could now take measure of our situation, and was not a little astonished and delighted to observe the island to be at least a mile distant from us, and the north-east end lying very plain, the ocean showing beyond it, though in the south-west the ice died out upon the sea-line. That we had been set away from the main by some current was very certain.
The population amounts to about 6,000 souls. It has a well fortified sea-line of defence, and a mole protected by a fort. It was on landing at this mole that Nelson lost his arm, and Captain Boscawen his life. The English colours taken on that occasion are preserved as trophies in the principal church. Few persons are seen walking about during the day, and those only of the lower orders.
On one side was the mosque, into which you could see, with its white walls and cool-matted floor, and quaint carved pulpit and ornaments, and nobody at prayers. In the middle distance rose up the noble towers and battlements of the knightly town, with the deep sea-line behind them.
The sea slapped and broke from time to time on our windward quarter, drenching the boat with brine; and now and then her gunwale scooped into the shoulder of a wave as she shot sidling up it. Meanwhile enormous masses of leaden-coloured clouds formed above our heads and on the sea-line; but these were always shifting in the strife of winds, and the sun shone through them petulantly.
The beating of her heart from the fury of the gallop had drained every hue from her face; her voice was scarcely articulate in its breathless haste as she saluted him. "Monsieur, I have come from Algiers since noon " "From Algiers!" He and his officers echoed the name of the city in incredulous amaze; they knew how far from them down along the sea-line the white town lay.
North, south, east, and west spread that land of his, the sea did not stop it; his empire clomb the high mountains, and spread abroad its arms over the valleys of them; all along the sea-line shore cities set with their crowns of towers in the midst of broad bays, each fit, it seemed, to be a harbour for the navies of all the world.
Yet even as a mere break in the frightful and enduring continuity of the sea-line even as something that was not sea nor sky nor the cold silent and mocking illusion of clouds it took a character of blessedness in my eyes; my gaze hung upon it joyously, and my heart swelled with a new impulse of life in my breast.
One of the eye-piece lenses had been lost or broken, for, as the youth raised the glasses to sweep again the distant sea-line, he covered the left-hand cylinder with a flat, oblong object a printed book.
The fancied picture had grown almost real, when the tears filled his eyes, and, to hide his emotion, he turned his face towards the sea-line, opposite the hazy streak that meant land. "There she is again.... She is following us!" he said. "What?" cried the Spanish captain. "There is a vessel," muttered the General. "I saw her yesterday," answered Captain Gomez.
It was a wonderfully fair morning, the sky clear from sea-line to sea-line, and of a very soft blue, the ocean of a like hue, with a high swell running, that was a majestic undulation even from the height at which I surveyed it. The sun stood over the ice in the north-east, and the dazzle kept me weeping, so intolerable was the effulgence.
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