wishes of the
officers and the crews. But the pilots, drawing their shoulders up and
repeating the refrain, "No _practico_, no _possebla_!" cursed us
bitterly, and were in a vile mood, I was told, cursing more than usual,
and that is saying a great deal, for all will agree who have heard them
that the average "Dago" pilot is the most foul-mouthed thing afloat.

Down the river and past the light-ship we came once more, this time with
no halt to make, no backing sails to let a pilot off, nothing at all to
stop us; we spread all sail to a favourable breeze, and reached Ilha
Grande eight days afterward, beating the whole fleet by two days.
Garfield kept strict account of this. He was on deck when we made the
land, a dark and foggy night it was! nothing could be seen but the
dimmest outline of a headland through the haze. I knew the place, I
thought, and Garfield said he could smell land, fog or coal-tar. This,
it will be admitted, was reassuring. A school of merry porpoises that
gambolled under the bows while we stood confidently in for the land,
diving and crossing the bark's course in every direction, also guarded
her from danger. I knew that so long as deep-sea porpoises kept with us
we had nothing to fear of the ground. When the lookout cried, "Porpoises
gone," we turned the bark's head off-shore, backed the main-tops'l, and
sent out the "pigeon" (lead). A few grains of sand and one soft,
delicate white shell were brought up out of fourteen fathoms of water.
We had but to heed these warnings and guides, and our course would be
tolerably clear, dense and all as the fog and darkness was.

The lead was kept constantly going as we sailed along in the intense
darkness, till the headland of our port was visible through the haze of
grey morning. What Garfield had smelled, I may mention, turned out to be
coal-tar, a pot of which had been capsized on deck by the leadsman, in
the night.

By daylight in the morning, April 29, we had found the inner entrance to
Ilha Grande, and sailed into the harbour for the second time with this
cargo of hay. It was still very foggy, and all day heavy gusts of wind
came down through the gulches in the mountains, laden with fog and rain.

Two days later, the weather cleared up, and our friends began to come
in. They found us there all right, anchored close under the highest
mountain.

Eight days of sullen gloom and rain at this place; then brimstone,
smoke, and fire turned on to us, and we we