Willis the Pilot

CHAPTER XIX.

EIGH­TEEN HUN­DRED AND TWELVE--THE MARY--COUNT UGOLI­NO--THE SOURCES OF RIVERS--THE ALPS DE­MOL­ISHED--NO MORE PYRE­NEES--THE FIRST SHIP--AD­MI­RAL NOAH--FLEETS OF THE IS­RAELITES--THE COM­PASS--PRINT­ING--GUN­POW­DER--AC­TIUM AND SALAMIS--DI­DO AND AE­NEAS--STEAM--DON GARAY AND ROGER BA­CON--MELCHTHAL, FURST, AND WILLIAM TELL--GO­ING A-​PLEA­SUR­ING--UP­SET VER­SUS BLOWN UP--A DEAD CALM--THE LOG--WILLIS'S ARCHIPELA­GO--THE IS­LAND OF SOPHIA--THE BREAD FRUIT-​TREE--NA­TIVES OF POLY­NE­SIA--STRIPED TROWSERS--AB­DUC­TION OF WILLIS--IS HE TO BE ROAST­ED OR BOILED?--WHEN THE WINE IS POURED OUT, WE MUST DRINK IT.

At the date of the events nar­rat­ed in the pre­ceed­ing chap­ter, com­par­ative­ly lit­tle was known of Ocea­nia, that is, of the is­lands and con­ti­nents that are scat­tered about the Pa­cif­ic Ocean. Most of them had been dis­cov­ered, named, and marked cor­rect­ly enough in the charts, but be­yond this all was sup­po­si­tion, hy­poth­esis, and mys­tery. The mighty em­pire of Eng­land in the east was then on­ly in its in­fan­cy, Sut­teeism and Thug­gism were still ram­pant on the banks of the Ganges, but the pow­er of the de­scen­dants of the Great Mogul was on the wane. Cal­ifor­nia was on­ly known as the hunt­ing-​ground of a sav­age race of wild In­di­ans. The now rich and flour­ish­ing colonies of Aus­tralia were rep­re­sent­ed by the con­vict set­tle­ment of Syd­ney. The Dutch had as­sert­ed that the ter­ri­to­ry of New Hol­land was ut­ter­ly un­in­hab­it­able, and this was still the be­lief of the civ­ilized world; nor was it with­out con­sid­er­able op­po­si­tion on the part of _soi-​dis­ant_ phi­lan­thropists that the En­glish gov­ern­ment suc­ceed­ed in es­tab­lish­ing a prison de­pot on what at the time was con­sid­ered the sole spot in that vast ter­ri­to­ry sus­cep­ti­ble of cul­ti­va­tion. At the present time, these for­mer­ly-​de­spised re­gions send _one hun­dred tons of pure gold_ to Eng­land. The po­lit­ical state of Eu­rope it­self had at this time as­sumed a sin­gu­lar as­pect. Napoleon had made him­self mas­ter of near­ly all the con­ti­nen­tal states; Spain, Por­tu­gal, Bel­gium, Hol­land, and a part of Ger­many were at his feet; and, by the Peace of Tilsit, he had se­cured the coõper­ation of Alexan­der, Em­per­or of Rus­sia, in his schemes to ru­in the trade and com­merce of Great Britain. Eng­land, by her op­por­tune seizure of the Dan­ish fleet, broke up the first great north­ern con­fed­er­acy that was formed against her. This act, though much im­pugned by the politi­cians of the day, is now known not on­ly to have been per­fect­ly jus­ti­fi­able, but al­so high­ly cred­itable to the po­lit­ical fore­sight of Can­ning and Castlereagh, by whom it was sug­gest­ed, to say noth­ing of the dar­ing and bold­ness that Nel­son dis­played in ex­ecut­ing the ma­noeu­vre. When news of this event reached the Rus­sian Em­per­or it threw him in­to a parox­ysm of rage, and he de­clared war against Eng­land in vi­olent lan­guage. He had the in­so­lence to make peace with France the _sina qua non_ of his friend­ship. At the dis­tance of near­ly half a cen­tu­ry, the ac­tu­al lan­guage em­ployed has a pe­cu­liar fla­vor. The em­per­or, af­ter de­tail­ing his grievances, de­clares that hence­forth there shall be no con­nec­tion be­tween the two coun­tries, and calls on his Bri­tan­nic Majesty to dis­miss his min­is­ters, and con­clude a peace forth­with. The British Gov­ern­ment replied to this by or­der­ing Nel­son to set sail forth­with for the mouth of the Ne­va. A bit­ter and scorch­ing man­ifesto was at the time for­ward­ed to the em­per­or. It ac­cused him flat­ly of du­plic­ity, and bold­ly de­fied him and all his le­gions. The whole doc­ument is well wor­thy of pe­rusal in these lack­adaisi­cal times. It is dat­ed West­min­is­ter, De­cem­ber 18, 1807. It sets forth anew the prin­ci­ples of mar­itime war, which Eng­land had then rigid­ly in force. Napoleon had de­clared the whole of the British Is­lands in a state of block­ade. The British Gov­ern­ment replied by blockad­ing _de fac­to_ the whole of Eu­rope. This was done by those cel­ebrat­ed or­ders in coun­cil, which, more than any­thing else, pre­cip­itat­ed the down­fall of Napoleon. They threw the trade of the world in­to the hands of Eng­land. Of course, Rus­sia was deeply af­fect­ed, so was Spain and all the oth­er mar­itime states; and they were all, one way or an­oth­er, in open hos­til­ity with this coun­try. But Eng­land laughed all their threats to scorn; and in the whole his­to­ry of the coun­try, there was not a more bril­liant pe­ri­od in her event­ful his­to­ry. She stood alone against the world in arms. Even the blus­ter­ings of the Unit­ed States were un­heed­ed, and in no de­gree dis­turbed her stern equa­nim­ity. She saw the road to vic­to­ry, and re­solved to pur­sue it. But Eng­land then had great states­men, and, of them all, Lord Castlereagh was the great­est, al­though he served a Prince Re­gent who cared no more for Eng­land or the En­glish peo­ple, than the Irish mem­ber, who, when re­proached for sell­ing his coun­try, thanked God that he had a coun­try to sell.

At length the ill-​will of the Amer­icans re­solved it­self in­to open war­fare, and the Unit­ed States was num­bered with the overt en­emies of Eng­land. This re­sult­ed in British troops march­ing up to Wash­ing­ton and burn­ing the Capi­tol, or Congress House, about the ears of the mem­bers who had stirred up the strife. Mean­while, all the is­lands of France in the east and west had been tak­en pos­ses­sion of; the British flag waved on the Span­ish is­land of Cu­ba, and in the no less valu­able pos­ses­sions of Hol­land, in Ja­va. Ev­ery­where on the ocean Eng­land held undis­put­ed sway. This state of things gave rise to one great evil--the sea swarmed with cruis­ers and pri­va­teers, En­glish, French, and Amer­ican; so that no ves­sel, un­less sail­ing un­der con­voy, heav­ily armed, or a very swift sail­er, but ran risk of cap­ture.

The _Mary_--for so Fritz now called the pin­nace--had been ten days at sea, the wind had died away, and for some time scarce­ly a zephyr had ruf­fled the sur­face of the wa­ter, the sails were lazi­ly flap­ping against the mast, and but for the cur­rents, the voy­agers would have been al­most sta­tion­ary. It may read­ily be sup­posed that, un­der such cir­cum­stances, their progress was some­what slow, and, as Jack ob­served, to judge from their ac­tu­al rate of sail­ing, they ought to have start­ed when very young, in or­der to ar­rive at the ter­mi­na­tion of the voy­age be­fore they be­came bald-​head­ed old men.

They prayed for a breeze, a gale, or even a storm; their fresh wa­ter was be­gin­ning to get sour, and they re­flect­ed that, if the calm con­tin­ued any length of time, their pro­vi­sions would even­tu­al­ly run short, and the or­di­nary re­source of eat­ing one an­oth­er would stare them in the face. Jack, be­ing the youngest, would prob­ably dis­ap­pear first, next Fritz, then Willis would be left to eat him­self, in or­der to avoid dy­ing of hunger, just as the un­for­tu­nate Count Ugoli­no de­voured his own chil­dren to save them from or­phan­age.

As yet, how­ev­er, there were no symp­toms of such a dire dis­as­ter; they were in ex­cel­lent health and tol­er­able spir­its; they had pro­vi­sions enough to last them for six months at least, and con­se­quent­ly had not as yet, at all events, the slight­est oc­ca­sion to man­ifest a ten­den­cy to an­thro­pophag­ism.

“I can un­der­stand the sea,” re­marked Jack, “as I un­der­stand the land and the sky; God cre­at­ed them, that is enough; but I can­not un­der­stand how a mighty riv­er like the Nile or the Ganges can con­tin­ue eter­nal­ly dis­charg­ing im­mense del­uges of wa­ter in­to the sea with­out be­com­ing ex­haust­ed. From what fath­om­less reser­voirs do the Ama­zon and the Mis­sis­sip­pi re­ceive their end­less tor­rents?”

“The reser­voirs of the great­est rivers,” replied Fritz, “are noth­ing more than drops of wa­ter that fall from the crevice of some rock on or near the sum­mit of a hill; these are col­lect­ed to­geth­er in a pool or hol­low, from which they is­sue in the form of a slen­der rivulet. At first, the small­est peb­ble is suf­fi­cient to ar­rest the course of this thread of wa­ter; but it turns up­on it­self, gath­ers strength, fi­nal­ly sur­mounts the ob­sta­cle, dash­es over it, unites it­self with oth­er rivulets, reach­es the plain, scoops out a bed, and goes on, as you say, for ev­er emp­ty­ing its wa­ters in­to the sea.”

“Yes; but it is the source of these sources that I want to know the ori­gin of. You speak of hills, whilst we know that wa­ter nat­ural­ly, by rea­son of its weight and flu­id­ity; seeks to se­crete it­self in the low­est beds of the earth.”

“It is scarce­ly nec­es­sary for me to ob­serve that wa­ter may come down a hill, al­though it nev­er goes up. Rain, snow, dew, and gen­er­al­ly all the va­pors that fall from the at­mo­sphere, fur­nish the enor­mous mass­es of wa­ter that are con­stant­ly flow­ing in­to the sea. The va­por alone that is ab­sorbed in the air from the sea is more than suf­fi­cient to feed all the rivers on the face of the earth. Moun­tains, by their for­ma­tion, ar­rest these va­pors, col­lect them in a hole here and in a cav­ern there, and per­mit them to fil­ter by a mil­lion of threads from rock to rock, fer­til­iz­ing the land and nour­ish­ing the rivers that in­ter­sect it. If, there­fore, you were to sup­press the Alps that rise be­tween France and Italy, you would, at the same time, ex­tin­guish the Rhone and the Po.”

“It would be a pity to do that,” said Jack; “there was a time though when there were no Pyre­nees.”

“That must have been, then, at a pe­ri­od pri­or to the for­ma­tion of gran­ite, which is es­teemed the old­est of rocks.”

“No such thing,” in­sist­ed Jack; “it was so late as 1713, when, by the peace of Utrecht, the crown of Spain was se­cured to the Duke of An­jou, grand­son of Louis XIV.”

“How­somev­er,” re­marked Willis, “all the mariners in the French fleet could not con­vince me that the Pyre­nean moun­tains are on­ly a hun­dred years old.”

“My broth­er is on­ly speak­ing metaphor­ical­ly,” said Fritz; “when the crown of Spain was as­signed to the Duke of An­jou, his grand­fa­ther said--_Qu il n'y avait plus de Pyrénées_. He meant by that sim­ply, that France and Spain be­ing gov­erned by the same prince, the moral bar­ri­er be­tween them ex­ist­ed no longer. The formidable moun­tains still stood for all that, and he who re­moves them would cer­tain­ly be pos­sessed of ex­traor­di­nary pow­er.”

“I am al­ways putting my foot in it,” said Willis, “when the yarn is about the land; let us talk of the sea for a bit. Who built the first ship?”

“Well,” replied Fritz, “I should say that the first ship was the ark.”

“Whence we may in­fer,” added Jack, “that Noah was the first ad­mi­ral.”

“We learn from the Scrip­tures,” con­tin­ued Fritz, “that the first nav­iga­tors were the chil­dren of Noah, and it ap­pears from pro­fane his­to­ry that the ear­li­est at­tempts at nav­iga­tion were man­ifest­ed near where the ark rest­ed; con­se­quent­ly, we may fair­ly pre­sume that the art of ship-​build­ing arose from the tra­di­tions of the del­uge and the ark.”

“In that case, the art in ques­tion dates very far back.”

“Yes, since it dates from 2348 years be­fore the birth of Christ; but the hu­man race de­gen­er­at­ed, the tra­di­tions were for­got­ten, and nav­iga­tion was con­fined to planks, rafts, bark ca­noes, or the trunk of a tree hol­lowed out by fire.”

“That is the sort of craft used by the in­hab­itants of Poly­ne­sia at the present day,” re­marked Willis.

“It ap­pears, how­ev­er, by the Book of Job, that pi­rates ex­ist­ed in those days, and that they went to sea in ships and cap­tured mer­chant­men, which proves, to a cer­tain ex­tent, that there were mer­chant­men to con­quer. We know al­so that David and Solomon equipped large fleets, and even fought bat­tles on sea.”

“Whether an an­cient or mod­ern, a Jew or a Gen­tile,” said Willis, “he must have been a brave fel­low who launched the first ship, and risked him­self and his goods at sea in it.”

“True,” con­tin­ued Fritz; “but when once the equi­lib­ri­um of a float­ing body was known, there would be no longer any risk; as soon as it came to be un­der­stood that any sol­id body would float if it were lighter than its bulk of wa­ter, the mat­ter was sim­ple enough.”

“Very good,” in­ter­rupt­ed Jack; “but the words 'when' and 'as soon as' im­ply a great deal; _when_, or _as soon as_, we know any­thing, the mys­tery of course dis­ap­pears. But be­fore! there is the dif­fi­cul­ty. Par­ti­cles of wa­ter do not co­here--how is it, then, that a ship of war, that of­ten weighs two mil­lions of pounds, does not sink through them, and go to the bot­tom? In­di­vid­uals, like my­self for ex­am­ple, who are not mem­bers of a learned so­ci­ety, may be par­doned for not know­ing how wa­ter bears the weight of a sev­en­ty-​four.”

“The sev­en­ty-​four would, most un­doubt­ed­ly, sink if it were heav­ier than the weight of wa­ter it dis­placed; but this is not the case; wood is gen­er­al­ly lighter than wa­ter.”

“The wood, yes; but the can­non, the car­go, and the crew?”

“You for­get the ca­boos­es, the cock­pits, and the cab­ins, that do not weigh any­thing. Al­low­ing for ev­ery­thing, the weight of a ship, car­go and all, is much lighter than its bulk of wa­ter, and con­se­quent­ly it can­not sink.”

“But how is it, then, that the im­mense bulk of a sev­en­ty-​four moves so eas­ily in the wa­ter? One would think that its prodi­gious weight would make it stick fast, and con­tin­ue im­move­able.”

“When the sev­en­ty-​four in ques­tion has dis­placed its weight of wa­ter, its own weight is sub­sti­tut­ed for the wa­ter, and is in con­se­quence vir­tu­al­ly an­ni­hi­lat­ed; it does not, in point of fact, weigh any­thing at all, and there­fore is eas­ily im­pelled by the wind.”

“When there is any, un­der­stood,” added Jack.

“And a yard or so of can­vas,” sug­gest­ed Willis.

“True,” con­tin­ued Fritz, “a sail or two would be very de­sir­able; these in­stru­ments of propul­sion do not ap­pear, how­ev­er, to have been used by the an­cients. We first hear of a sail be­ing em­ployed at the time when Isis went in search of her hus­band Osiris, who was killed by his broth­er Ty­phon, and whose quar­ters were scat­tered in the Nile. This la­dy, it seems, took off the veil that cov­ered her head, and fas­tened it to an up­right shaft stuck in the mid­dle of the boat, and, much to her as­ton­ish­ment, it im­pelled her on­wards at a mar­vel­lous speed.”

“A clever young wom­an that,” said Willis; “but I doubt whether veils would an­swer the pur­pose on board a sev­en­ty-​four, par­tic­ular­ly as re­gards the main­sail and mizen­tops.”

“The Phoeni­cians were the most en­ter­pris­ing of the ear­ly nav­iga­tors. They ap­peared to have sailed round Africa with­out a com­pass, for they em­barked on the Red Sea and reap­peared at the mouth of the Nile, and the com­pass was not in­vent­ed till the four­teenth cen­tu­ry.”

“And who was the in­ven­tor of the com­pass?” in­quired Willis.

“Ac­cord­ing to some au­thor­ities, it was in­vent­ed by a Neapoli­tan named Jean Goya; ac­cord­ing to oth­ers, the in­ven­tor was a cer­tain Hugues de Bercy.”

“Then,” said Jack, “you do not ad­mit the claims of the Chi­nese and Hin­doos, who as­sert pri­or­ity in the dis­cov­ery?”

“I nei­ther de­ny nor ad­mit their claims, be­cause I do not know the grounds up­on which they are found­ed; like the in­ven­tion of gun­pow­der and print­ing, the dis­cov­ery of the com­pass has many ri­val claimants.”

“I am of opin­ion,” said Jack, “that Gut­ten­berg is en­ti­tled to the hon­or of dis­cov­er­ing print­ing, and that Berthold Schwartz in­vent­ed gun­pow­der.”

“Per­haps you are right; but there is scarce­ly any in­ven­tion of im­por­tance that has not two or three names fas­tened to it as in­ven­tors; they stick to it like bar­na­cles, and there is no way to shake any of them off. So, in the case of il­lus­tri­ous men, na­tions dis­pute the hon­or of giv­ing them birth; there are six or sev­en towns in Asia Mi­nor that claim to be the birth-​place of Homer. Na­tion­al van­ities just­ly de­sire to pos­sess the largest amount of ge­nius; hence, no soon­er does any­thing use­ful make its ap­pear­ance in the world, than half a dozen na­tions or in­di­vid­uals start up to claim it as their off­spring. The wis­est course, un­der such cir­cum­stances, is to side with the best ac­cred­it­ed opin­ion, which I have done in the case of the com­pass.”

“It was no joke,” said Willis, “to cir­cum­nav­igate Africa with­out a com­pass.”

“You are quite right, Willis, if you judge the nav­iga­tion of those days by the mod­ern stan­dard; but it is to be borne in mind that the an­cients nev­er lost sight of the coast. They steered from cape to promon­to­ry, and from promon­to­ry to cape, drop­ping their an­chor ev­ery night and re­main­ing well in-​shore till morn­ing. If by ac­ci­dent they were driv­en out in­to the open sea, and the stars hap­pened to be hid­den by fog or clouds, they were lost be­yond re­cov­ery, even though with­in a day's sail of a har­bor; be­cause, whilst sup­pos­ing they were mak­ing for the coast, they might, in all prob­abil­ity, be steer­ing in pre­cise­ly the op­po­site di­rec­tion.”

“It is cer­tain­ly mar­vel­lous,” said Jack, “that a piece of iron stuck up­on a board should be a safe and sure guide to the mariner through the track­less ocean, even when the stars are en­veloped in ob­scu­ri­ty and dark­ness!”

“It is a sym­bol of faith,” re­marked Willis, “that sup­plies the doubts and in­cer­ti­tudes of rea­son.”

“As for the ships, or rather gal­leys, of the an­cients,” con­tin­ued Fritz, “with the ex­cep­tion of the am­bi­tious fleets of the Greeks and Ro­mans that fought at Salamis and Ac­tium, one of the mod­ern ships of war could sweep them all out of the sea with its rud­der.”

“Yes,” said Jack, “at the pe­ri­od of which you speak, the an­cients pos­sessed a great ad­van­tage over us. The winds in those days were per­son­ages, and were very well known; they were called Ae­olus, Bore­as, and so forth. They were to be found in caves or is­lands, and, if treat­ed with ci­vil­ity, were re­mark­ably con­de­scend­ing. Queen Di­do, through one of these po­ten­tates, ob­tained con­trary winds, to pre­vent Ae­neas from leav­ing her.”

“By the way,” said Willis, “there is, or at least was, in one of the Scot­tish rivers, a ship with­out ei­ther oars or sails.”

“Yes, very like­ly; but it did not move.”

“It did though, and, what is more, against both wind and tide.”

“I wish we had your won­der­ful ship here just now, it is just the thing to suit us un­der present cir­cum­stances,” said Jack.

“So it would, Mas­ter Jack, for it sails against cur­rents, up rivers, and the crew care no more about the wind than I do about the col­or of the clouds when I am light­ing my pipe.”

“You don't hap­pen to mean that the _Fly­ing Dutch­man_ has ap­peared on the Scotch coast, do you, Willis?”

“Not a bit of it, I mean just ex­act­ly what I say. It is a re­al ship, with a re­al stern and a re­al fig­ure-​head, but manned by black­smiths in­stead of mariners.”

“Well, but how does it move? Does some­body go be­hind and push it, or is it dragged in front by sea-​hors­es and wa­ter-​kelpies?”

“No, it moves by steam.”

“But how?”

“Aye, there lies the mys­tery. The af­fair has of­ten been dis­cussed by us sailors on board ship; some have sug­gest­ed one way and some an­oth­er.”

“Nei­ther of which throws much light on the sub­ject,” ob­served Jack; “at least, in so far as we are con­cerned.”

“All I can tell you,” said Willis, “is, that the steam is ob­tained by boil­ing wa­ter in a large caul­dron, and that the pow­er so ob­tained is very pow­er­ful.”

“That it cer­tain­ly is, if it could be con­trolled, for steam oc­cu­pies sev­en­teen or eigh­teen hun­dred times the space of the wa­ter in its liq­uid state; but then, if the ves­sel that con­tains the boil­ing wa­ter has no out­let, the steam will burst it.”

“It ap­pears that it can be pre­vent­ed do­ing that, though,” replied Willis, “even though ad­di­tion­al heat be ap­plied to the va­por it­self.”

“By heat­ing the steam, the va­por may ac­quire a vol­ume forty thou­sand times greater than that of the wa­ter; all that is well known; but as soon as it comes in con­tact with the air, noth­ing is left of it but a cloud, which col­laps­es again in­to a few drops of wa­ter.”

“That may be all very true, Mas­ter Fritz, if the steam were al­lowed to es­cape in­to the air; but it is on­ly per­mit­ted to do that af­ter it has done du­ty on board ship. It ap­pears that steam is very elas­tic, and may be com­pressed like In­dia-​rub­ber, but has a ten­den­cy to re­sist the pres­sure and set it­self free. Imag­ine, for ex­am­ple, a head­strong young man, for a long time kept in re­straint by parental con­trol, sud­den­ly let loose, and al­lowed scope to fol­low the bent of his own in­cli­na­tions.”

“Very good, Willis; for ar­gu­ment's sake, let us take your head­strong young man, or rather the steam, for grant­ed, and let us ad­mit that it is as elas­tic as ev­er you please--but what then?”

“Then you must imag­ine a pis­ton in a cylin­der, forced up­wards when the steam is heat­ed, and falling down­wards when the steam is cooled. Next fan­cy this up­ward and down­ward mo­tion reg­ulat­ed by a num­ber of wheels and cranks that turn two wheels on each side of the ship, keep­ing up a con­stant jan­gling and clank­ing, the wheels or pad­dles splash­ing in the wa­ter, and then you may form a slight idea of the thing.”

“Oh!” cried Jack, “we in­vent­ed a ma­chine of that kind for our ca­noe, with a turn­spit. Do you rec­ol­lect it, Fritz?”

“Yes, I rec­ol­lect it well enough; and I al­so rec­ol­lect that the ca­noe went much bet­ter with­out than with it.”

“You spoke just now,” con­tin­ued Willis, “of ri­val na­tions, who pounce like birds of prey up­on ev­ery new in­ven­tion; and so it is with the steamship. An Amer­ican, named Ful­ton, made a tri­al in the Hud­son with one in 1807--that is about five years ago--and I be­lieve the Yan­kees, in con­se­quence, are lay­ing claim to the in­ven­tion.”

“Now that you bring the thing to my rec­ol­lec­tion,” said Fritz, “the idea of ap­ply­ing steam in the arts is by no means new, al­though, I must can­did­ly ad­mit, I nev­er heard of it be­ing used in pro­pelling ships be­fore. The Spaniards as­sert that a cap­tain of one of their ves­sels, named Don Blas de Garay, dis­cov­ered, as ear­ly as the six­teenth cen­tu­ry, the art of mak­ing steam a mo­tive pow­er.”

“I don't be­lieve that,” said Jack.

“Why?”

“Be­cause a re­al Spaniard has nev­er less than thir­ty-​six words in his name. If you had said that the steam en­gine was dis­cov­ered by Don Pedrillo y Al­vares y Tole­do y Con­cha y Alon­zo y Mar­tinez y Xacar­il­lo, or some­thing of that sort, then I could be­lieve the man to have been a gen­uine Spaniard, but not oth­er­wise.”

“Spaniard or no Spaniard, the Span­ish claim the dis­cov­ery of steam through Don Blas; the Ital­ians like­wise claim the dis­cov­ery for a me­chani­cian, named Bian­ca; the Ger­mans as­sign its dis­cov­ery to Solomon de Causs; the French urge De­nis Pa­pin; and the En­glish claim the in­ven­tion for Roger Ba­con.”

“You have for­got­ten the Swiss,” said Jack.

“The Swiss,” replied Fritz, with an air of dig­ni­ty, “put for­ward no can­di­date: steam and va­por and smoke are not much in their line. They dis­cov­ered some­thing in­finite­ly bet­ter--the world is in­debt­ed to them for the in­ven­tion of lib­er­ty. I mean ra­tio­nal, in­tel­li­gent, and true lib­er­ty--not the sav­agery and mob tyran­ny of red re­pub­li­can­ism. The three dis­cov­er­ers of this no­ble in­ven­tion were Melchthal, Furst, and William Tell.”

“You can have no idea,” con­tin­ued Willis, “of the stir that steam was cre­at­ing in Eu­rope the last time I was there. Of course there were plen­ty of in­cred­ulous peo­ple who said that it was no good; that it would nev­er be of any use; and that if it were, it would not pay for the fu­el con­sumed. On the oth­er hand, the en­thu­si­asts held that, even­tu­al­ly, it would be used for ev­ery­thing; that in the air we should have steam bal­loons; on the sea, steam ships, steam guns, and per­haps steam men to work them; that on land there would be steam coach­es driv­en by steam hors­es. Jour­neys, say they, will be per­formed in no time, that is, as soon as you start for a place you ar­rive at it, just like an ar­row, that no soon­er leaves the bow than you see it stuck in the bull's eye.”

“In that case,” ob­served Jack, “it will be nec­es­sary to do away with res­pi­ra­tion, as well as hors­es.”

“A Lon­don­er will be able to say to his wife, My dear, I am go­ing to Birm­ing­ham to-​day, but I will be back to din­ner; and if a Parisian lights his cigar at Paris, it will burn till he ar­rives at Bor­deaux.”

“Hol­loa, Willis, you have fair­ly con­vert­ed Fritz and me in­to marines at last.”

“I am on­ly speak­ing of what will be, not of what is--that makes all the dif­fer­ence you know. It is ex­pect­ed that there will be steam coach­es on ev­ery turn­pike-​road; so that, in­stead of hir­ing a post-​chaise, you will have to or­der a lo­co­mo­tive, and in­stead of post­boys, you will to en­gage an en­gi­neer and stok­er.”

“Then, in­stead of say­ing, Put the hors­es to,” re­marked Jack, “we shall have to say, Get the steam up.”

“Ex­act­ly; and when you go on a plea­sure ex­cur­sion, you will be whisked from one point to an­oth­er with­out hav­ing time to see whether you pass through a desert or a flow­er-​gar­den.”

“What, then, is to be­come of ad­ven­tures by the way, road-​side inns, and ban­dit­ti?”

“All to be sup­pressed.”

“So it ap­pears,” said Jack; “men are to be car­ried about from place to place like flocks of sheep; per­haps they will in­vent steam dogs as well to run af­ter strag­glers, and bring them in­to the fold by the calf of the leg. Your new mode of go­ing a-​plea­sur­ing may be a very ex­cel­lent thing in its way, Willis; but it would not suit my taste.”

“Prob­ably not; nor mine ei­ther, for the mat­ter of that, Mas­ter Jack.”

“At all events,” said Fritz, “you would run no dan­ger of be­ing up­set on the road.”

“No; but, by way of com­pen­sa­tion, you may be blown up.”

“True, I for­got that.”

“This con­ver­sa­tion has car­ried us along an­oth­er knot,” said Jack, open­ing the log, which he had been ap­point­ed to keep; "and now, by your leave, I will read over some of my en­tries to re­fresh your mem­ories as to our pro­ceed­ings.

"March 9th.--Wind fair and fresh--steered to north-​west--a flock of seals un­der our lee bow--feel rather squeamish.

"10th.--No wind--fall in with a lar­gish is­land and four lit­tle ones, give them the name of Willis's Archipela­go.

"11th.--A dead calm--sea smooth as a mir­ror--all of us dull and sleepy.

"12th.--Heat 90 deg.--shot a boo­bie, roast­ed and ate him, rather fishy--passed the night amongst some reefs.

"13th.--Same as the 12th, but no boo­bie.

"14th.--Same as the 13th.

“Dread­ful­ly tire­some, is it not,” said Jack; “no won­der they call this ocean the Pa­cif­ic.”

“Alas!” sighed Willis, think­ing of the _Nel­son_, “it does not al­ways jus­ti­fy the name.”

“15th.--Hailed a low is­land, sur­round­ed with break­ers, named it Sophia's Is­land.”

“But all these is­lands have been named half a dozen times al­ready,” said Willis.

“Oh, nev­er mind that, an­oth­er name or two will not break their backs.”

"16th.--Cur­rent bear­ing us rapid­ly to west­ward--caught a sea cow, and had it con­vert­ed in­to pem­ican.

“17th.--Shot an­oth­er boo­bie, which we put in the pot to re­mind us that we were no worse off than the sub­jects of Hen­ry IV. No wind--sea blaz­ing like a fur­nace.”

“You will have to turn over a new leaf in your log by-​and-​by,” said Willis, “or I am very much mis­tak­en.”

“Well, I hope you are not mis­tak­en, Willis, for I am tired of this sort of thing.”

A red haze now be­gan to shroud the sun, the heat of the air be­came al­most sti­fling, but the muf­fled roar of dis­tant thun­der and bright flash­es of light warned the voy­agers to pre­pare for a change. Willis reefed the can­vas close to the mast, and sug­gest­ed that ev­ery­thing like­ly to spoil should be put un­der hatch­es. This was scarce­ly done be­fore the storm had reached them, and they were soon in the midst of a trop­ical del­uge. At first, a light breeze sprung up, blow­ing to­wards the south-​east, which con­tin­ued till mid­night, when it chopped round. To­wards morn­ing, it blew a heavy gale from east to east-​south-​east, with a heavy sea run­ning. In the mean­time, the pin­nace la­bored heav­ily, and sev­er­al seas broke over her. Willis now saw that their on­ly chance of safe­ty lay in al­ter­ing their course. All the can­vas was al­ready braced up ex­cept the jib, which was nec­es­sary to give the craft head­way, and with this sail alone they were soon af­ter speed­ing at a rapid rate in the di­rec­tion of the Poly­ne­sian Is­lands. The gale con­tin­ued al­most with­out in­ter­mis­sion for three weeks, dur­ing which pe­ri­od Willis con­sid­ered they must have been driv­en some hun­dreds, of miles to the north-​west.

The gale at length ceased, the sea re­sumed its tran­quil­ity, and the wind be­came fa­vor­able. The pin­nace had, how­ev­er, been a good deal bat­tered by the storm, and their fresh wa­ter was get­ting low, and it was de­cid­ed they should still keep a west­er­ly course till they reached an is­land where they could re­fit be­fore re­sum­ing their voy­age.

“The gale has not done us much good,” said Jack, sad­ly; “if it had blown the oth­er way, we might have been in the In­di­an Ocean by this time.”

“Cheer up,” said Willis, tak­ing the glass from his eye, “I see land about three miles to lee­ward, and the land­ing ap­pears easy.”

“But the sav­ages?” in­quired Jack.

“The is­lands of this lat­itude are not all in­hab­it­ed,” replied Fritz; “be­sides, un­der our present cir­cum­stances, we have no al­ter­na­tive but to take our chance with them.”

“Well, I do not know that,” ob­ject­ed Jack; “it would be bet­ter for us to do with­out fresh wa­ter than to run the risk of be­ing eat­en.”

“What a beau­ti­ful coast!” cried Willis, who still kept the tele­scope at his eye. “Near the shore the land is flat, and ap­pears cul­ti­vat­ed; but be­hind, it ris­es grad­ual­ly, and is closed in with a range of hills, cov­ered with trees. There is a beau­ti­ful bay in front of us, which ap­pears to in­vite us ashore. But the place is in­hab­it­ed; the shore is strewn with huts, and I can see clumps of the bread-​fruit tree grow­ing near them.”

“What sort of veg­etable is the bread-​fruit?” in­quired Fritz.

“It is a very ex­cel­lent thing, and sup­plies the na­tives with bread with­out the in­ter­ven­tion of grain, flour-​mills, or bak­ers. It can be eat­en ei­ther raw, or baked, or boiled; ei­ther way, it is palat­able. The tree it­self is like our ap­ple trees; but the fruit is as large as a pine-​ap­ple--when it is ripe, it is yel­low and soft. The na­tives, how­ev­er, gen­er­al­ly gath­er it be­fore it is ripe; it is then cooked in an oven; the skin is burnt or peeled off--the in­side is ten­der and white, like the crumb of bread or the flour of the pota­to.”

“Let me have the tele­scope an in­stant,” said Fritz; “I should like to see what the na­tives are like. Ah, I see a troop of them col­lect­ing on shore; some of them seem to be cov­ered with a kind of wrought-​steel ar­mor.”

“Per­haps the de­scen­dants of the Cru­saders,” re­marked Jack, “re­turn­ing from the Holy Land by way of the Pa­cif­ic Ocean!”

“Oth­ers wear striped pan­taloons,” con­tin­ued Fritz.

“That is to say,” ob­served Willis, “the whole lot of them are as naked as posts. What you sup­pose to be cuirass­es and pan­taloons, are their tabooed breasts and legs.”

“Are you sure of that, Willis?”

“Not a doubt about it.”

“Such gar­ments are both durable and eco­nom­ical,” re­marked Jack; “but I scarce­ly think they are suit­able for stormy weath­er. But do you think it is safe to land amongst such a set of bare­backed ras­cals, Willis?”

“I should not like to take the re­spon­si­bil­ity of guar­an­tee­ing our safe­ty; but I do not see what oth­er course we can adopt.”

They had now ap­proached with­in mus­ket-​shot of the shore. They could see that a ven­er­able-​look­ing old man stood a few paces in front of the group of na­tives. He held a green branch in one hand, and pressed with the oth­er a long flow­ing white beard to his breast.

“Ac­cord­ing to uni­ver­sal gram­mar,” said Jack, “these signs should mean peace and ami­ty.”

“Yes,” replied the Pi­lot; “the more so that the rear-​guard are pour­ing wa­ter on their heads, which is the great­est mark of cour­tesy the na­tives of Poly­ne­sia can show to strangers.”

“Gen­tle­men,” cried Jack, tak­ing off his cap and mak­ing a low bow, “we are your most obe­di­ent ser­vants.”

“We must be on our guard,” said Willis; “these sav­ages are very de­ceit­ful, and some­times let fly their ar­rows un­der a show of friend­ship. I will go on shore alone, whilst you keep at a lit­tle dis­tance off, ready to fire to cov­er my re­treat, if need be.”

The young men ob­ject­ed to Willis in­cur­ring dan­ger that they did not share; but on this point Willis was in­ex­orable, so they were obliged to suf­fer him to de­part alone. By good chance, they had shipped a small cask of glass beads on board the pin­nace. The Pi­lot took a few of these with him, and, plac­ing a cask and a cou­ple of cal­abash­es in the ca­noe, he rowed ashore.

The na­tives were ev­ident­ly in great com­mo­tion; there was an im­mense amount of run­ning back­wards and for­wards. Some­thing im­por­tant was, ob­vi­ous­ly enough, go­ing for­ward; but, whether the ex­cite­ment was caused by cu­rios­ity or ad­mi­ra­tion, it was hard to say. They might be prepar­ing a friend­ly re­cep­tion for the stranger, or they might be prepar­ing to eat him--which of the two was an in­ter­est­ing ques­tion that Willis did not care about prob­ing too deeply at that par­tic­ular mo­ment.

Fritz and Jack anx­ious­ly watched the op­er­ations of the na­tives from the bay. They could not with safe­ty aban­don the pin­nace; but to leave Willis to the mer­cy of the sin­is­ter-​look­ing peo­ple on shore was not to be thought of ei­ther. The _Mary_ was, there­fore, run in as close as pos­si­ble, and Jack leaped on the sands a few min­utes af­ter the Pi­lot.

Willis marched bold­ly on to­wards the na­tives, and when he ar­rived be­side the old man, the crowd opened up and formed an av­enue through which a chief ad­vanced, fol­lowed by a num­ber of men, seem­ing­ly priests, who car­ried a grotesque-​look­ing fig­ure that Jack pre­sumed to be an idol. The fig­ure was made up of wick­er-​work--was of colos­sal height--the fea­tures, which rep­re­sent­ed noth­ing on earth be­neath nor heav­en above, were in­con­ceiv­ably hideous--the eyes were discs of moth­er-​of-​pearl, with a nut in the cen­tre--the teeth were ap­par­ent­ly those of a shark, and the body was cov­ered with a man­tle of red feath­ers.

At the com­mand of the chief, some of the na­tives ad­vanced and placed a quan­ti­ty of ba­nanas, bread-​fruits, and oth­er veg­eta­bles at the Pi­lot's feet; the priests then came for­ward and knelt down be­fore him, and seemed to wor­ship af­ter the fash­ion of the an­cients when they paid their de­vo­tions to the Eleusini­an god­dess, or the stat­ue of Apol­lo. Mean­while, Jack, on his side, was like­wise sur­round­ed by the na­tives, who was treat­ed with much less cer­emo­ny than Willis. In­stead of falling down on their knees, each of them, one af­ter the oth­er, rubbed their noses against his, and then danced round him with ev­ery demon­stra­tion of sav­age joy.

Jack had now an op­por­tu­ni­ty of ob­serv­ing the per­son­ages about him more in de­tail. They were most­ly tall and well-​formed; their fea­tures bore some re­sem­blance to those of a ne­gro, their nose be­ing flat and their lips thick; on the oth­er hand, they had the high cheek-​bones of the North Amer­ican In­di­an and the fore­head of the Malay. Near­ly all of them were en­tire­ly naked, but wore a neck­lace and bracelets of shells. They were armed with a sort of spear and an axe of hard wood edged with stone. Their skins were tat­tooed all over with lines and cir­cles, and paint­ed; these dec­ora­tions, in some in­stances, ex­hibit­ing care­ful ex­ecu­tion and no in­con­sid­er­able de­gree of artis­tic skill. These ob­ser­va­tions made, Jack pushed his way to the spot where Willis was re­ceiv­ing the homage of the priests.

“What! you here?” said the Pi­lot.

“Yes, Willis, I have come to see what de­tained you. By the way, is there any­thing the mat­ter with my nose?”

“Noth­ing that I can see; but the na­tives of New Zealand rub their noses against each oth­er, and prob­ably the same us­age is fash­ion here.”

“Why, then, do they make you an ex­cep­tion?”

“I have not the re­motest idea.”

The priests at length rose, and the chief ad­vanced. This dig­ni­tary ad­dressed a long dis­course to Willis in a sing-​song tone, which last­ed near­ly half an hour. Af­ter this, he stood aside, and looked at Willis, as if he ex­pect­ed a re­ply.

“Il­lus­tri­ous chief, king, prince, or nabob,” said Willis, “I am high­ly flat­tered by all the fine things you have just said to me. It is true, I have not un­der­stood a sin­gle word, but the fruits you have placed be­fore me speak a lan­guage that I can un­der­stand. How­somev­er, most mighty po­ten­tate, we are not in want of pro­vi­sions; but if you can show us a spring of good wa­ter, you will con­fer up­on us an ev­er­last­ing fa­vor.”

“You might just as well ask him to show you what o'clock it is by the di­al of his cathe­dral,” said Jack.

“They would on­ly point to the sun if I did.”

“But sup­pose the sun in­vis­ible.”

“Then they would be in the same po­si­tion as we are when we for­get to wind up our watch­es. Gen­tle­men sav­ages,” he said, turn­ing to the na­tives and hand­ing them the glass beads, “ac­cept these tri­fles as a to­ken of our es­teem.”

The na­tives re­quired no press­ing, but ac­cept­ed the prof­fered gifts with great good-​will. The danc­ing and singing then recom­menced with re­dou­bled fury, and poor Jack's nose was al­most oblit­er­at­ed by the con­stant rub­bing it un­der­went.

Sud­den­ly the hub­bub ceased, and a pro­found si­lence reigned through­out the as­sem­bly. The old­est of the priests brought a man­tle of red feath­ers, sim­ilar to the one that cov­ered the idol. This was thrown over the Pi­lot's shoul­ders; a tuft of feath­ers, some­thing re­sem­bling a fu­ner­al plume, was placed up­on his head, and a large se­mi-​cir­cu­lar fan was thrust in­to his hand. Thus equipped, a pro­ces­sion was formed, one half be­fore and the oth­er half be­hind him. The _cortége_ be­gan to move slow­ly in the di­rec­tion of the in­te­ri­or, but the op­er­ation was dis­con­cert­ed by Willis, who re­mained stock-​still.

“Thank you,” he said, “I would rather not go far away from the shore.”

As soon as the na­tives saw clear­ly that Willis was not dis­posed to move, the chief is­sued a man­date, and four stout fel­lows im­me­di­ate­ly re­moved the idol from its po­si­tion, and Willis was placed up­on the va­cant pedestal.

The kind of ado­ra­tion with which all these pro­ceed­ings were ac­com­pa­nied great­ly per­plexed the voy­agers. What could it all mean? Was this a com­mon mode of wel­com­ing strangers? It oc­curred to Jack that the Ro­mans were ac­cus­tomed to dec­orate with flow­ers the vic­tims they de­signed as sac­ri­fices to the al­tars of their gods be­fore im­mo­lat­ing them. This rem­inis­cence made his flesh creep with hor­ror, and filled him with the ut­most dis­may.

“Willis!” he cried to the Pi­lot, whom they were now lead­ing off in tri­umph, “let us try the ef­fects of our ri­fles on this rab­ble; you jump over the heads of your wor­ship­pers, and we will charge through them to shore. I will shoot the first man that pur­sues us, and sig­nal Fritz to dis­charge the four-​pounder amongst them.”

“Im­pos­si­ble,” replied Willis; “we should both be stuck all over with ar­rows and lances be­fore we could reach the pin­nace. Did I not tell you not to come ashore?”

“True, Willis, but did you sup­pose I had no heart? How could I look on qui­et­ly whilst you were sur­round­ed by a mob of fe­ro­cious-​look­ing men?”

“Well, well, Mas­ter Jack, say no more about it; I do not sup­pose they mean to do me any harm; but there would be dan­ger in rous­ing the pas­sions of such a mul­ti­tude of peo­ple. They seem, luck­ily, to di­rect their at­ten­tions ex­clu­sive­ly to me, so you had bet­ter go back and look af­ter the ca­noe.”

“No; I shall fol­low you wher­ev­er you go, Willis, even in­to the soup-​ket­tles of the wretch­es.”

“In that case,” said Willis, “the wine is poured out, and, such as it is, we must drink it.”