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So we concluded to return to Juan Fernandez, to get our anchors, long boats, and several tons of water already casked, together with a ton of sea-lion oil, which we had left there. Captain Stradling also had left five of his men, who were gone to the west part of the island, and knew nothing of our going away after the enemy.
This current carried them past Hispaniola westward again to those same "Gardens of the Queen." The series of storms that here overtook the two battered little ships were almost as bad as those that met them on their last approach to Hispaniola. Anchors were lost and the men kept the ships from sinking only by the constant use of "three pumps and all their pots and kettles."
With a frigate's anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons for spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies, to see whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents really lie encamped beyond my mortal sight! Brit
The natives had begun to cultivate the arts of civilisation, and to appreciate, in some degree, the inestimable blessings of Christianity. The plough had torn up the virgin soil, and the anchors of merchant-ships had begun to kiss the strand. The crimes peculiar to civilised men had not yet been developed. The place had all the romance and freshness of a flourishing infant colony.
When the dawn broke the schooner could be made out more clearly. Both masts were still standing, their larger sails blown away. The bowsprit was broken short off close to her chains. About this dragged the remnants of a jib sail over which the sea soused and whitened. She was drifting slowly and was now but a few hundred yards from the beach, holding, doubtless, by her anchors.
In half an hour we shall have light enough to see them. "There, listen! There's the splash of their anchors. There, again! I fancy there are two ships moored broadside on, stem and stern." All this time, the work on shore had been conducted in absolute silence, and the pirates could have had no intimation that their presence was discovered.
The Captain, Vesuvius, and Royal William were aground for some time, but were ultimately got off again without much damage; and the Terrible, which was drifting and in great danger, was only brought up by means of an anchor constructed for the occasion by lashing one of the quarter-deck guns to two small anchors.
The mate cut one of the anchors because they were afraid of fouling the sunken torpedo, and we steamed slowly out from the shelter of the sandbank. No escort was visible, and soon the sailors began to look anxious. They scanned the horizon anxiously. At last one cried, "There she is." Far away against the western dawn could be seen a thin needle mark of smoke.
There were too few sponges to please Captain Wilson, who sailed over the ground whenever the water was smooth, studying the bottom with practiced eye and throwing out little floats, with anchors attached, wherever a sponge was seen. "I'm going to the 'Lake," said the captain, one afternoon at the end of a day of little success. "It's a feast or a famine there. You get rich or go broke."
A standing dispute in the British navy, in those days of hemp cables, used to be whether it was safer to ride with three anchors down, or with one only, having to it three cables, bent together, so as to form one of thrice the usual length. The balance of opinion leaned to the latter; the dead weight of so much hemp held the ship without transmitting the strain to the anchor itself.
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