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Updated: June 15, 2025
Provisions were transferred accordingly, and by noon next day the stranger made sail on a wind, the sea being tolerably smooth, and the breeze still ahead. In three hours she was out of sight to the northward and westward, the Montauk holding her own dull course to the southward, with the double view of striking the trades, or of reaching one of the Cape de Verdes. Steph.
The fable of the Tortoise and the Hare affords but a feeble simile to characterize such a match; and before old Hard-a-weather and his gasket had reached the yard-arm, our nimble Mona had trotted half-way up the leach of the topsail, and was seated as familiarly on the bridle of the maintop-bowline, as if he had been perched on the feathery branch of a cocoa-nut tree, enjoying the sea breeze, in his native island, amongst the beautiful Cape de Verdes.
The usual course to the West Indies in those days was by way of the Azores and the Cape Verdes, at one or both of which places ships were wont to renew their supplies of wood, water, and provisions, and from the last of which mariners shaped a due west course before the trade- winds.
So he determined to make for the Cape Verdes, and risk the chance of being able to water in those islands. Should no prying war ships happen along he anticipated little difficulty. The day wore away slowly. It was about an hour by sun in the afternoon before the fog began to lift. A sailor was at each mast head watching for the Adams, as the course of the corvette was entirely unknown.
Women and children fled in terror at our approach and no wonder: eyes like hunted boars, haggard faces, yellow as the sails at the Cape Verdes, and beards two days long, act very unlike cosmetics.
There was not a snake track in the dust or a raven in the sky, but as he topped the brow of the hill and looked down into the cañon, Hardy saw a great herd of cattle, and Creede in the midst of them still hacking away at the thorny palo verdes.
In springtime the deep-rooted mesquites and palo verdes threw out the golden halo of their flowers until the cañons were aflame; the soggy sahuaros drank a little at each sparse downpour and defied the drought; all the world of desert plants flaunted their pigmented green against the barren sky as if in grim contempt; but the little streams ran weaker and weaker, creeping along under the sand to escape the pitiless sun.
Here I've been cuttin' these ornery palo verdes until my hands are like a Gila monster's back, and now look at them cows eat giant cactus! There's no use talkin', Rufe, the feller that wears the number five hat and the number forty jumper ain't worth hell-room when you're around here, gimme that axe!"
"I've got enough of cutting palo verdes," replied Hardy, "but you just lend me that axe for a minute and I'll show you something." He stepped to the nearest sahuaro and with a few strokes felled it down the hill, and when Creede saw how the cattle crowded around the broken trunk he threw down his hat and swore. "Well damn me," he said, "for a pin-head!
Thus a whole month passed before they were ready to cross the Atlantic. On leaving the Cape Verdes, the Admiral decided to send his best captain with three of the ships due west to Haiti, this because the Isabella colony was in sore need of provisions.
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