At 9 A.M. we bade our friends good-by, and with three cheers pushed off from the ship. The boat was only twenty-two feet long and an eighth of an inch thick: it was made of sheet-iron, and was very narrow and crank. Most of us, except myself and a whaleman named Paxton, were unused to rowing, so that the prospect of reaching land depended a good deal upon the day remaining calm, and upon keeping the boat trimmed, the gunwales being only ten inches out of the water.
There was no excuse for this risk of life, save that insatiable thirst for novelty which all experience to some extent after the monotony of a long voyage. I will only say, in regard to myself, that I was too full of joy at the idea of a ramble in the footsteps of Robinson Crusoe to think of risk at all. If there was danger, it merely served to give zest to the adventure.
By a calculation of the distance and our rate of going, we expected to reach the land by sundown or soon after; and then our plan was to make a tent of the boat-sail, and sleep under it till morning, when by rising early we thought we could take a run over the island, and perhaps get some fruit and vegetables. By that time, should a light breeze spring up during the night, we thought it likely the ship would be well up by the land, and we could pull out and get on board without difficulty. Before long we found that distances are very deceptive in these latitudes where the atmosphere is so clear; for notwithstanding the statement of the captain that by the reckoning we were seventy miles from land, we believed that he only told us so to deter us from going, and that we were not much more than half that distance. In rowing we made a division of our number, taking turns or watches of an hour each at the oars, so as to share the labor. Once fairly under way, with a smooth sea and a pleasant day before us, we became exceedingly merry at the expense of our fellow-passengers whom we had left in the ship to drift about in the calm, and it afforded us much diversion to think how they would be disappointed upon finding that we were in earnest about going ashore. Before long we had cause to wish ourselves back again in the ship, which goes to prove that apparently the most unfortunate are often less so than those who seem to be favored by circumstances.