The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism Volume I Part 14

The seaman ash.o.r.e will note many of these beauties; but his superior officers will see more. The _cottage ornee_, to which they will be invited, with its lawn and flowering shrubs, tiny specimens of which we admire in hot-houses at home; the gra.s.s as green as that of England, and winding away in the cool shade of strange evergreens; the yellow cocoa-nut palms on the nearest spur of hill throwing back the tender blue of the distant mountains; groups of palms, with perhaps _Erythrinas umbrosa_ (_Bois immortelles_, they call them in Trinidad), with vermilion flowers-trees of red coral, sixty feet high-interspersed; a glimpse beyond of the bright and sleeping sea, and the islands of the Bocas "floating in the s.h.i.+ning waters," and behind a luxuriously furnished cottage, where hospitality is not a mere name, but a very sound fact; what on earth can man want more?

Kingsley, in presence of the rich and luscious beauty, the vastness and repose, to be found in Trinidad, sees an understandable excuse for the tendency to somewhat grandiose language which tempts perpetually those who try to describe the tropics, and know well that they can only fail. He says: "In presence of such forms and such colouring as this, one becomes painfully sensible of the poverty of words, and the futility, therefore, of all word-painting; of the inability, too, of the senses to discern and define objects of such vast variety; of our aesthetic barbarism, in fact, which has no choice of epithets, save such as 'great,' and 'vast,' and 'gigantic;' between such as 'beautiful,' and 'lovely,' and 'exquisite,'

and so forth: which are, after all, intellectually only one stage higher than the half-brute 'Wah! wah!' with which the savage grunts his astonishment-call it not admiration; epithets which are not, perhaps, intellectually as high as the 'G.o.d is great!' of the Mussulman, who is wise enough not to attempt any a.n.a.lysis, either of Nature or of his feelings about her, and wise enough, also ... in presence of the unknown, to take refuge in G.o.d."

Monkeys of many kinds, jaguars, toucans, wild cats; wonderful ant-eaters, rac.o.o.ns, and lizards; and strange birds, b.u.t.terflies, wasps, and spiders abound, but none of those animals which resent the presence of man. Happy land!

But the gun has fired. H.M.S. _Sea_ is getting all steam up. The privilege of leave cannot last for ever: it is "All aboard!" Whither bound? In the archipelago of the West Indies there are so many points of interest, and so many ports which the sailor of the Royal Navy is sure to visit. There are important docks at Antigua, Jamaica, and Bermuda; while the whole station-known professionally as the "North American and West Indian"-reaches from the north of South America to beyond Newfoundland, Kingston, and Jamaica, where England maintains a flag-s.h.i.+p and a commodore, a dockyard, and a naval hospital.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KINGSTON HARBOUR, JAMAICA.]

Kingston Harbour is a grand lagoon, nearly shut in by a long sand-spit, or rather bank, called "The Palisades," at the point of which is Port Royal, which, about ninety years ago, was nearly destroyed by an earthquake. Mr.

Trollope says that it is on record that hardy "subs" and hardier "mids"

have ridden along the Palisades, and have not died from sunstroke in the effort. But the chances were much against them. The ordinary ingress and egress, as to all parts of the island's coasts, is by water. Our naval establishment is at Port Royal.

Jamaica has picked up a good deal in these later days, but is not the thriving country it was before the abolition of slavery. Kingston is described as a formal city, with streets at right angles, and with generally ugly buildings. The fact is, that hardly any Europeans or even well-to-do Creoles live in the town, and, in consequence, there are long streets, which might almost belong to a city of the dead, where hardly a soul is to be seen: at all events, in the evenings. All the wealthier people-and there are a large number-have country seats-"pens," as they call them, though often so charmingly situated, and so beautifully surrounded, that the term does not seem very appropriate. The sailor's pocket-money will go a long way in Kingston, if he confines himself to native productions; but woe unto him if he will insist on imported articles! All through the island the white people are very English in their longings, and affect to despise the native luxuries. Thus, they will give you ox-tail soup when real turtle would be infinitely cheaper. "When yams, avocado pears, the mountain cabbage, plantains, and twenty other delicious vegetables may be had for the gathering, people will insist on eating bad English potatoes; and the desire for English pickles is quite a pa.s.sion." All the servants are negroes or mulattoes, who are greatly averse to ridicule or patronage; while, if one orders them as is usual in England, they leave you to wait on yourself. Mr. Trollope discovered this.

He ordered a lad in one of the hotels to fill his bath, calling him "old fellow." "Who you call fellor?" asked the youth; "you speak to a gen'lman gen'lmanly, and den he fill de bath."

The sugar-cane-and by consequence, sugar and rum-coffee, and of late tobacco, are the staple productions of Jamaica. There is one district where the traveller may see an unbroken plain of 4,000 acres under canes.

The road over Mount Diabolo is very fine, and the view back to Kingston very grand. Jack ash.o.r.e will find that the people all ride, but that the horses always walk. There are respectable mountains to be ascended in Jamaica: Blue Mountain Peak towers to the height of 8,000 feet. The highest inhabited house on the island, the property of a coffee-planter, is a kind of half-way house of entertainment; and although Mr.

Trollope-who provided himself with a white companion, who, in his turn, provided five negroes, beef, bread, water, brandy, and what seemed to him about ten gallons of rum-gives a doleful description of the clouds and mists and fogs which surrounded the Peak, others may be more fortunate.

The most important of the West Indian Islands, Cuba-"Queen of the Antilles"-does not, as we all know, belong to England, but is the most splendid appanage of the Spanish crown. Havana, the capital, has a grand harbour, large, commodious, and safe, with a fine quay, at which the vessels of all nations lie. The sailor will note one peculiarity: instead of laying alongside, the s.h.i.+ps are fastened "end on"-usually the bow being at the quay. The harbour is very picturesque, and the entrance to it is defended by two forts, which were taken once by England-in Albemarle's time-and now could be knocked to pieces in a few minutes by any nation which was ready with the requisite amount of gunpowder.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HAVANA.]

Havana is a very gay city, and has some special attractions for the sailor-among others being its good cigars and cheap Spanish wine and fruits. Its greatest glory is the Paseo-its Hyde Park, Bois de Boulogne, Corso, Cascine, Alameda-where the Cuban belles and beaux delight to promenade and ride. There will you see them, in bright-coloured, picturesque attire-sadly Europeanised and Americanised of late, though-seated in the volante, a kind of hanging cabriolet, between two large wheels, drawn by one or two horses, on one of which the negro servant, with enormous leggings, white breeches, red jacket, and gold lace, and broad-brimmed straw hat, rides. The volante is itself bright with polished metal, and the whole turn-out has an air of barbaric splendour. These carriages are never kept in a coach-house, but are usually placed in the halls, and often even in the dining-room, as a child's perambulator might with us. Havana has an ugly cathedral and a magnificent opera-house.

Slave labour is common, and many of the sugar and tobacco planters are very wealthy. Properties of many hundred acres under cultivation are common. Mr. Trollope found the negroes well-fed, sleek, and fat as brewers' horses, while no sign of ill-usage came before him. In crop times they sometimes work sixteen hours a day, and Sunday is not then a day of rest for them. There are many Chinese coolies, also, on the island.

Kingsley, speaking of the islands in general, says that he "was altogether unprepared for their beauty and grandeur." Day after day, the steamer took him past a s.h.i.+fting diorama of scenery, which he likened to Vesuvius and Naples, repeated again and again, with every possible variation of the same type of delicate loveliness. Under a cloudless sky, and over the blue waters, banks of light cloud turned to violet and then to green, and then disclosed grand mountains, with the surf beating white around the base of tall cliffs and isolated rocks, and the pretty country houses of settlers embowered in foliage, and gay little villages, and busy towns. "It was easy," says that charming writer, "in presence of such scenery, to conceive the exultation which possessed the souls of the first discoverers of the West Indies. What wonder if they seemed to themselves to have burst into fairy-land-to be at the gates of the earthly Paradise? With such a climate, such a soil, such vegetation, such fruits, what luxury must not have seemed possible to the dwellers along those sh.o.r.es? What riches, too, of gold and jewels, might not be hidden among those forest-shrouded glens and peaks? And beyond, and beyond again, ever new islands, new continents, perhaps, and inexhaustible wealth of yet undiscovered worlds."(111)

The resemblance to Mediterranean, or, more especially, Neapolitan, scenery is very marked. "Like causes have produced like effects; and each island is little but the peak of a volcano, down whose shoulders lava and ash have slidden toward the sea." Many carry several cones. One of them, a little island named Saba, has a most remarkable settlement _half-way up a volcano_. Saba rises sheer out of the sea 1,500 or more feet, and, from a little landing-place, a stair runs up 800 feet into the very bosom of the mountain, where in a hollow live some 1,200 honest Dutchmen and 800 negroes. The latter were, till of late years, nominally the slaves of the former; but it is said that, in reality, it was just the other way. The blacks went off when and whither they pleased, earned money on other islands, and expected their masters to keep them when they were out of work. The good Dutch live peaceably aloft in their volcano, grow garden crops, and sell them to vessels or to surrounding islands. They build the best boats in the West Indies up in their crater, and lower them down the cliff to the sea! They are excellent sailors and good Christians. Long may their volcano remain quiescent!

When the steamer stops at some little port, or even single settlement, the negro boats come alongside with luscious fruit and vegetables-bananas and green oranges; the sweet sop, a fruit which looks like a strawberry, and is as big as an orange; the custard-apples-the pulp of which, those who have read "Tom Cringle's Log" will remember, is fancied to have an unpleasant resemblance to brains; the avocado, or alligator-pears, otherwise called "mids.h.i.+pman's b.u.t.ter," which are eaten with pepper and salt; scarlet capsic.u.ms, green and orange cocoa-nuts, roots of yam, and cush-cush, help to make up baskets as varied in colour as the gaudy gowns and turbans of the women. Neither must the junks of sugar-cane be omitted, which the "coloured" gentlemen and ladies delight to gnaw, walking, sitting, and standing; increasing thereby the size of their lips, and breaking out, often enough, their upper front teeth. Rude health is in their faces; their cheeks literally s.h.i.+ne with fatness.

But in this happy archipelago there are drawbacks: in the Guadaloupe earthquake of 1843, 5,000 persons lost their lives in the one town of Point-a-Pitre alone. The Souffriere volcano, 5,000 feet high, rears many a peak to the skies, and shows an ugly and uncertain humour, smoking and flaming. The writer so often quoted gives a wonderfully beautiful description of this mountain and its surroundings. "As the sun rose, level lights of golden green streamed round the peak, right and left, over the downs; but only for a while. As the sky-clouds vanished in his blazing rays, earth-clouds rolled up from the valleys behind, wreathed and weltered about the great black teeth of the crater, and then sinking among them and below them, shrouded the whole cone in purple darkness for the day; while in the foreground blazed in the suns.h.i.+ne broad slopes of cane-field; below them again the town (the port of Ba.s.se Terre), with handsome houses, and old-fas.h.i.+oned churches and convents, dating possibly from the seventeenth century, embowered in mangoes, tamarinds, and palmistes; and along the beach, a market beneath a row of trees, with canoes drawn up to be unladen, and gay dresses of every hue. The surf whispered softly on the beach. The cheerful murmur of voices came off the sh.o.r.e, and above it, the tinkling of some little bell, calling good folks to early ma.s.s. A cheery, brilliant picture as man could wish to see, but marred by two ugly elements. A mile away on the low northern cliff, marked with many a cross, was the lonely cholera cemetery, a remembrance of the fearful pestilence which, a few years since, swept away thousands of the people: and above frowned that black giant, now asleep: but for how long?"

The richness of the verdure which clothes these islands to their highest peaks seems a mere coat of green fur, and yet is often gigantic forest trees. The eye wanders over the green abysses, and strains over the wealth of depths and heights, compared with which fine English parks are mere shrubberies. There is every conceivable green, or rather of hues, ranging from pale yellow through all greens into cobalt; and "as the wind stirs the leaves, and sweeps the lights and shadows over hill and glen, all is ever-changing, iridescent, like a peac.o.c.k's tail; till the whole island, from peak to sh.o.r.e, seems some glorious jewel-an emerald, with tints of sapphire and topaz, hanging between blue sea and white surf below, and blue sky and white cloud above." And yet, over all this beauty, dark shadows hang-the shadow of war and the shadow of slavery. These seas have been oft reddened with the blood of gallant sailors, and every other gully holds the skeleton of an Englishman.

Here it was that Rodney broke De Gra.s.se's line, took and destroyed seven French s.h.i.+ps of war, and scattered the rest: saving Jamaica, and, in sooth, the whole West Indies, and bringing about the honourable peace of 1783. Yon lovely roadstead of Dominica: there Rodney caught up with the French just before, and would have beaten them so much the earlier but for his vessels being becalmed. In that deep bay at Martinique, now lined with gay houses, was for many years the Cul-de-sac Royal, the rendezvous and stronghold of the French fleet. That isolated rock hard by, much the shape and double the size of the great Pyramids, is Sir Samuel Hood's famous Diamond Rock,(112) to which that brave old navigator literally tied with a hawser or two his s.h.i.+p, the _Centaur_, and turned the rock into a fortress from whence to sweep the seas. The rock was for several months rated on the books of the Admiralty as "His Majesty's s.h.i.+p, _Diamond Rock_." She had at last to surrender, for want of powder, to an overwhelming force-two seventy-fours and fourteen smaller s.h.i.+ps of war-but did not give in till seventy poor Frenchmen were lying killed or wounded, and three of their gun-boats destroyed, her own loss being only two men killed and one wounded. Brave old sloop of war! And, once more, those glens and forests of St. Lucia remind us of Sir John Moore and Sir Ralph Abercrombie, who fought, not merely the French, but the "Brigands"-negroes liberated by the Revolution of 1792.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE _CENTAUR_ AT THE DIAMOND ROCK, MARTINIQUE.]

But the good s.h.i.+p must proceed; and as British naval interests are under consideration, let her bows be turned to Bermuda-a colony, a fortress and a prison, and where England owns an extensive floating dock, dock-yards, and workshops.(113) Trollope says that its geological formation is mysterious. "It seems to be made of soft white stone, composed mostly of little sh.e.l.ls-so soft, indeed, that you might cut Bermuda up with a hand-saw. And people are cutting up Bermuda with hand-saws. One little island, that on which the convicts are established, has been altogether so cut up already. When I visited it, two fat convicts were working away slowly at the last fragment." Bermuda is the crater of an extinct volcano, and is surrounded by little islets, of which there is one for every day of the year in a s.p.a.ce of twenty by three miles. These are surrounded again by reefs and rocks, and navigation is risky.

Were the Bermudas the scene of Ariel's tricks? They were first discovered, in 1522, by Bermudez, a Spaniard; and Shakespeare seems to have heard of them, for he speaks of the

"Still vexed Bermoothes."

Trollope says that there is more of the breed of Caliban in the islands than of Ariel. Though Caliban did not relish working for his master more than the Bermudian of to-day, there was an amount of energy about him entirely wanting in the existing islanders.

There are two towns, St. George and Hamilton, on different islands. The former is the head-quarters of the military, and the second that of the governor. It is the summer head-quarters of the admiral of the station.

The islands are, in general, wonderfully fertile, and will, with any ordinary cultivation, give two crops of many vegetables in the year. It has the advantages of the tropics, _plus_ those of more temperate climes.

For tomatoes, onions, beet-root, sweet potatoes, early potatoes, as well as all kinds of fruits, from oranges, lemons, and bananas to small berries, it is not surpa.s.sed by any place in the world; while arrowroot is one of its specialities. It is the early market-garden for New York.

s.h.i.+p-building is carried on, as the islands abound in a stunted cedar, good for the purpose, when it can be found large enough. The working population are almost all negroes, and are lazy to a degree. But the whites are not much better; and the climate is found to produce great la.s.situde.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BERMUDA, FROM GIBBS HILL.]

It is the sea round the Bermudas, more than the islands themselves, perhaps, that give its beauty. Everywhere the water is wonderfully clear and transparent, while the land is broken up into narrow inlets and headlands, and bays and promontories, nooks and corners, running here and there in capricious and ever-varying forms. The oleander, with their bright blossoms, are so abundant, almost to the water's edge, that the Bermudas might be called the "Oleander Isles."

The Bermuda convict, in Trollope's time, seemed to be rather better off than most English labourers. He had a pound of meat-good meat, too, while the Bermudians were tugging at their teeth with tough morsels; he had a pound and three-quarters of bread-more than he wanted; a pound of vegetables; tea and sugar; a gla.s.s of grog per diem; tobacco-money allowed, and eight hours' labour. He was infinitely better off than most sailors of the merchant service.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NORTH ROCK, BERMUDA.]

St. George, the military station of the colony, commands the only entrance among the islands suitable for the pa.s.sage of large vessels, the narrow and intricate channel which leads to its land-locked haven being defended by strong batteries. The lagoons, and pa.s.sages, and sea ca.n.a.ls between the little islands make communication by water as necessary as in Venice.

Every one keeps a boat or cedar canoe. He will often do his business on one island and have his residence on a second. Mark Twain has a wonderful facility for description; and his latest articles, "Random Notes of an Idle Excursion," contain a picturesque account of the Bermudas, and more particularly of Hamilton, the leading port. He says that he found it a wonderfully white town, white as marble-snow-flour. "It was," says he, "a town compacted together upon the sides and tops of a cl.u.s.ter of small hills. Its outlying borders fringed off and thinned away among the cedar forests, and there was no woody distance of curving coast or leafy islet sleeping on the dimpled, painted sea but was flecked with s.h.i.+ning white points-half-concealed houses peeping out of the foliage. * * * There was an ample pier of heavy masonry; upon this, under shelter, were some thousands of barrels, containing that product which has carried the fame of Bermuda to many lands-the potato. With here and there an onion. That last sentence is facetious, for they grow at least two onions in Bermuda to one potato. The onion is the pride and the joy of Bermuda. It is her jewel, her gem of gems. In her conversation, her pulpit, her literature, it is her most frequent and eloquent figure. In Bermudian metaphor it stands for perfection-perfection absolute.

"The Bermudian, weeping over the departed, exhausts praise when he says, 'He was an onion!' The Bermudian, extolling the living hero, bankrupts applause when he says, 'He is an onion!' The Bermudian, setting his son upon the stage of life to dare and do for himself, climaxes all counsel, supplication, admonition, comprehends all ambition, when he says, 'Be an onion!'" When the steamer arrives at the pier, the first question asked is not concerning great war or political news, but concerns only the price of onions. All the writers agree that for tomatoes, onions, and vegetables generally, the Bermudas are unequalled; they have been called, as noted before, the market-gardens of New York.

Jack who is fortunate enough to be on the West India and North American Stations must be congratulated. "The country roads," says the clever writer above quoted, "curve and wind hither and thither in the delightfulest way, unfolding pretty surprises at every turn; billowy ma.s.ses of oleander that seem to float out from behind distant projections, like the pink cloud-banks of sunset; sudden plunges among cottages and gardens, life and activity, followed by as sudden plunges into the sombre twilight and stillness of the woods; glittering visions of white fortresses and beacon towers pictured against the sky on remote hill-tops; glimpses of s.h.i.+ning green sea caught for a moment through opening headlands, then lost again; more woods and solitude; and by-and-by another turn lays bare, without warning, the full sweep of the inland ocean, enriched with its bars of soft colour, and graced with its wandering sails.

"Take any road you please, you may depend upon it you will not stay in it half a mile. Your road is everything that a road ought to be; it is bordered with trees, and with strange plants and flowers; it is shady and pleasant, or sunny and still pleasant; it carries you by the prettiest and peacefulest and most home-like of homes, and through stretches of forest that lie in a deep hush sometimes, and sometimes are alive with the music of birds; it curves always, which is a continual promise, whereas straight roads reveal everything at a glance and kill interest. * * * There is enough of variety. Sometimes you are in the level open, with marshes, thick grown with flag-lances that are ten feet high, on the one hand, and potato and onion orchards on the other; next you are on a hill-top, with the ocean and the islands spread around you; presently the road winds through a deep cut, shut in by perpendicular walls thirty or forty feet high, marked with the oddest and abruptest stratum lines, suggestive of sudden and eccentric old upheavals, and garnished with, here and there, a clinging adventurous flower, and here and there a dangling vine; and by-and-by, your way is along the sea edge, and you may look down a fathom or two through the transparent water and watch the diamond-like flash and play of the light upon the rocks and sands on the bottom until you are tired of it-if you are so const.i.tuted as to be able to get tired of it."

But as there are spots in the sun, and the brightest lights throw the deepest shadows everywhere; so on the Bermuda coasts there are, in its rare storms, dangers of no small kind among its numerous reefs and rocks.

The North Rock, in particular, is the monument which marks the grave of many a poor sailor in by-gone days. At the present time, however, tug-boats, and the use of steam generally, have reduced the perils of navigation among the hundreds of islands which const.i.tute the Bermuda group to a minimum.

The recent successful trip of Cleopatra's Needle in a vessel of unique construction will recall that of the Bermuda floating-dock, which it will be remembered was towed across the Atlantic and placed in its present position.

Bermuda being, from a naval point of view, the most important port on the North American and West Indian Stations, it had long been felt to be an absolute necessity that a dock capable of holding the largest vessels of war should be built in some part of the island. After many futile attempts to accomplish this object, owing to the porous nature of the rock of which the island is formed, it was determined that Messrs. Campbell, Johnstone & Co., of North Woolwich, should construct a floating-dock according to their patented inventions: those built by them for Carthagena, Saigon, and Callao having been completely successful. The dimensions of the dock for Bermuda, which was afterwards named after that island, are as follows:-

Length over all 381 feet.

Length between caissons 330 Breadth over all 124 Breadth between sides 84 Depth inside 53 5 in.

She is divided into eight longitudinal water-tight compartments, and these again into sets of compartments, called respectively load on and balance chambers. Several small compartments were also made for the reception of the pumps, the machinery for moving capstans, and cranes, all of which were worked by steam. She is powerful and large enough to lift an ironclad having a displacement of 10,400 tons, and could almost dock the _Great Eastern_.

The building of the _Bermuda_ was begun in August, 1866; she was launched in September, 1868, and finally completed in May, 1869. For the purposes of navigation two light wooden bridges were thrown across her, on the foremost of which stood her compa.s.s, and on the after the steering apparatus. She was also supplied with three lighthouses and several semaph.o.r.es for signalling to the men-of-war which had her in tow, either by night or day. In shape she is something like a round-bottomed ca.n.a.l boat with the ends cut off. From an interesting account of her voyage from Sheerness to Bermuda by "One of those on Board," we gather the following information respecting her trip. Her crew numbered eighty-two hands, under a Staff-Commander, R.N.; there were also on board an a.s.sistant naval surgeon, an Admiralty commissioner, and the writer of the book from which these particulars are taken. The first rendezvous of the _Bermuda_ was to be at the Nore.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BERMUDA FLOATING DOCK.]

On the afternoon of the 23rd of June, 1869, the _Bermuda_ was towed to the Nore by four ordinary Thames tugs, accompanied by H.M.SS. _Terrible_, _Medusa_, _Buzzard_, and _Wildfire_. On arriving at the Nore off the lights.h.i.+p she found the _Northumberland_ waiting for her. The tugs cast off, and a hawser was pa.s.sed to the _Northumberland_, which took her in tow as far as k.n.o.b Channel, the _Terrible_ bringing up astern. The _Agincourt_ was now picked up, and pa.s.sing a hawser on board the _Northumberland_, took the lead in the maritime tandem. A hawser was now pa.s.sed to the _Terrible_ from the stern of the _Bermuda_, so that by towing that vessel she might be kept from swaying from side to side. The _Medusa_ steamed on the quarter of the _Northumberland_, and the _Buzzard_ acted as a kind of floating outrider to clear the way. The North Foreland was pa.s.sed the same evening, at a speed of four knots an hour. Everything went well until the 25th, when she lost sight of land off the Start Point late in the afternoon of that day. On the 28th she was half-way across the Bay of Biscay, when, encountering a slight sea and a freshening wind, she showed her first tendency to roll, an accomplishment in which she was afterwards beaten by all her companions, although the prognostications about her talents in this direction had been of the most lugubrious description. It must be understood that the bottom of her hold, so to speak, was only some ten feet under the surface of the water, and that her hollow sides towered some sixty feet above it. On the top of each gunwale were wooden houses for the officers, with gardens in front and behind, in which mignonette, sweet peas, and other English garden flowers, grew and flourished, until they encountered the parching heat of the tropics. The crew was quartered in the sides of the vessel; and the top of the gunwales, or quarter-decks, as they might be called, communicated with the lower decks by means of a ladder fifty-three feet long.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VOYAGE OF THE "BERMUDA."]

To return, however, to the voyage. Her next rendezvous was at Porto Santo, a small island on the east coast of the island of Madeira. On July 4th, about six o'clock in the morning, land was signalled. This proved to be the island of Porto Santo; and she brought up about two miles off the princ.i.p.al town early in the afternoon, having made the voyage from Sheerness in exactly eleven days. Here the squadron was joined by the _Warrior_, _Black Prince_, and _Lapwing_ (gunboat), the _Helicon_ leaving them for Lisbon. Towards nightfall they started once more in the following order, pa.s.sing to the south of Bermuda. The _Black Prince_ and _Warrior_ led the team, towing the _Bermuda_, the _Terrible_ being towed by her in turn, to prevent yawing, and the _Lapwing_ following close on the heels of the _Terrible_. All went well until the 8th, when the breeze freshened, the dock rolling as much as ten degrees. Towards eight o'clock in the evening a mighty crash was heard, and the whole squadron was brought up by signal from the lighthouses. On examination it was found that the _Bermuda_ had carried away one of the chains of her immense rudder, which was swaying to and fro in a most dangerous manner. The officers and men, however, went to work with a will, and by one o'clock the next morning all was made snug again, and the squadron proceeded on its voyage. During this portion of the trip, a line of communication was established between the _Bermuda_ and the _Warrior_, and almost daily presents of fresh meat and vegetables were sent by the officers of the ironclad to their unknown comrades on board the dock. On the 9th, the day following the disaster to the rudder, they fell in with the north-east trade winds, which formed the subject of great rejoicing. Signals were made to make all sail, and reduce the quant.i.ty of coal burned in the boilers of the four steam vessels. The next day, the _Lapwing_, being shorter of coal than the others, she was ordered to take the place of the _Terrible_, the latter s.h.i.+p now taking the lead by towing the _Black Prince_. The _Lapwing_, however, proved not to be sufficiently powerful for this service. A heavy sea springing up, the dock began to yaw and behave so friskily that the squadron once more brought to, and the old order of things was resumed.

On the 25th the _Lapwing_ was sent on ahead to Bermuda to inform the authorities of the close advent of the dock. It was now arranged that as the _Terrible_ drew less water than any of the other s.h.i.+ps, she should have the honour of piloting the dock through the Narrows-a narrow, tortuous, and shallow channel, forming the only practicable entrance for large s.h.i.+ps to the harbour of Bermuda. On the morning of the 28th, Bermuda lighthouse was sighted, and the _Spitfire_ was shortly afterwards picked up, having been sent by the Bermudan authorities to pilot the squadron as far as the entrance of the Narrows. She also brought the intelligence that it had been arranged that the _Viper_ and the _Vixen_ had been ordered to pilot the dock into harbour. As they neared Bermuda, the squadron were met by the naval officer in charge of the station, who, after having had interviews with the captains of the squadron and of the _Bermuda_, rescinded the order respecting the _Vixen_ and the _Viper_, and the _Terrible_ was once more deputed to tow the _Bermuda_ through the Narrows.

Just off the mouth of this dangerous inlet, the _Bermuda_ being in tow of the _Terrible_ only, the dock became uncontrollable, and would have done her best to carry Her Majesty's s.h.i.+p to Halifax had not the _Warrior_ come to her aid, after the _Spitfire_ and _Lapwing_ had tried ineffectually to be of a.s.sistance.

By this time, however, the water in the Narrows had become too low for the _Warrior_; the _Bermuda_ had, therefore, to wait until high water next morning in order to complete the last, and, as it proved, the most perilous part of her journey. After the _Warrior_ and the _Terrible_ had towed the dock through the entrance of the inlet, the first-named s.h.i.+p cast off. The dock once more became unmanageable through a sudden gust of wind striking her on the quarter. Had the gust lasted for only a few seconds longer, the dock would have stranded-perhaps for ever. She righted, however, and the _Terrible_ steaming hard ahead, she pa.s.sed the most dangerous point of the inlet, and at last rode securely in smooth water, within a few cables' length of her future berth, after a singularly successful voyage of thirty-six days.