“Oh, a ship she was rigged and ready for sea, Windy weather! Stormy weather! And all of her sailors were fishes to be, Blow ye winds, westerly, gentle sou’ westerly, Blow ye winds westerly, steady she goes.”
Hurrying on deck, the boys found the bark already slipping through the water, while on the shore and resting on their oars in the boats, the islanders were waving farewells and shouting good wishes for a quick voyage and a full cargo.
An hour later, the island’s slopes were indistinct in the mist astern and as the boys took their last look at the towering, volcanic cone they felt a pang of regret at having left the island and the simple, pleasant folk that dwelt upon it.
Although it was early summer in these southern latitudes, the weather was chilly and desolate. Great, cold, green waves came rolling from the west, their crests breaking in hissing spray and the bark drove on under shortened canvas beneath a sullen, leaden sky. From time to time, driving squalls of snow and sleet screeched through the rigging, leaving every rope, shroud and stay ice-coated, and each time the _Hector_ buried her bluff bows beneath the mountainous seas, she rose with ice-sheeted decks. Bundled in heavy pea-jackets, hip-boots and oilskins, with sou’westers jammed upon their heads, the crew stood about, sheltering themselves behind masts, deck houses and try-works, and on the poop the officers and the two boys paced back and forth, stamping their feet and beating their arms to keep warm, while ever and anon the captain stopped to peer anxiously into the murk ahead. For several days it had been impossible to take an observation and the ship was plunging southward, navigated by dead reckoning only, while lookouts were ever at the mastheads straining their eyes for bergs or ice or even possible land. Each day, too, the bird convoy of the bark increased in numbers. Dozens of albatrosses of several kinds skimmed the breaking waves on tireless wings. Giant, white fulmars or “Molly Mokes,” snowy sheathbills, and a dozen other species of sea birds were everywhere, and often the boys caught sight of distant icebergs or vast, floating fields of pack-ice, shimmering like burnished steel against the gray-green sea.