id="Page_6" class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[6]"/> if, after hearing and seeing everything, I declined to join them.

This straightforward course seemed to please the managers, and I was put in full possession of all their plans, and immediately after signed the papers.

It is sufficient for me to give an outline of this plan simply, which, through the act of God, came to naught, and left me, a second Robinson Crusoe, on my lonely island.

The company was formed of one hundred persons, who each put in one hundred pounds to make a general capital,—except a few like myself, who were allowed a full paid-up share for eighty pounds, on account of being of the advance guard, and wages for our services according to our station, with our proportionate part of the dividends to be hereafter made.

With this fund paid in, amounting to about nine thousand eight hundred pounds, the managing committee purchased the schooner "Good Luck." She was a fore-topsail schooner, of one hundred and fifty-four tons measurement, built in Bath, Maine, and about seven years old,—strong, well built, sharp, and with a flush deck fore and aft. She cost two thousand four hundred pounds. The remainder of the money was used in purchasing the following outfit for the scheme we were engaged in:—

Four breech-loading Armstrong cannon, nine pounders, four old-fashioned nine-pounders, twenty-five Sharpe's breech-loading rifles, and twenty-five navy Colt's revolvers, with plenty of ammunition for all. These, in conjunction with boarding-pikes, cutlasses, hand-grenades, and a howitzer for the launch, comprised our armament. The hold was stored with a little of everything generally taken on such adventures,—knives, hatchets, and calico for the natives, and seeds, canned meats, and appliances for pearl fishing, house-building, etc., for ourselves. To these were added a sawmill, an upright steam-engine, a turning-lathe, blacksmith tools, etc.

Our plan was to find an island uninhabited, that would form a good centre from which to prosecute our purpose of pearl gathering, and to there establish a colony, sending home the "Good Luck" for the rest of our companions and their families.

Ten of us were chosen as the advance guard (all but three being sailors), to make the first venture, establish the colony, load the schooner, leave part of our force upon the island selected, and the remainder to bring back the schooner to Liverpool. "Man proposes, but God disposes."

On July 31, 1865, we set sail upon this disastrous voyage, and from that day to this have I never seen the faces of civilized beings except those on board of the schooner, and not those for many months. Our captain was a fine, manly fellow, of about eight and thirty years of age, and we all liked him. Duty on board was of course different than it would have been in a common vessel; and although we had watches and regular discipline, each was familiar with the other, having, as we had, an equal stake in the adventure.

We had a tough time off Cape Horn, and, although the "Good Luck" behaved well, it was here that we met with our first misfortune. In stowing the jib, in a gale of wind, preparatory to laying-to, three men were swept overboard, and we never saw them more. This cast a damper upon the remaining seven, and was but a precursor of what was yet to happen. We rounded Cape Horn the first part of October, and, steering northwest, soon reached more pleasant weather. Our course was towards the group of islands, so well known in the South Pacific, called the Society Islands.

CHAPTER II.

Push forward for the Society Islands. Driven into Magellan Straits by stress of weather. Anchor in a land-locked bay. Search for fresh water. Attacked by savages. Serious injuries to Capt. Davis and one of the crew. Return to the schooner and make sail for the open ocean. Resolve to return to England. Finally lay our course for Easter Island.

We had proceeded but a very short way towards the Society Islands when a terrific storm arose from the westward, driving us back upon the coast of South America. We lay to for many days, bending down before the blast, and drifting all the time rapidly to the southward and eastward; till one morning we discovered land broad off our lee beam, and, by a forenoon observation which the captain obtained, we found that we were off the western opening of the Straits of Magellan, and we soon put the schooner's head before the howling blast and ran in for shelter, rest, and repairs. We came up with the land very rapidly under easy sail, and passed the frowning cliffs and rocks on our port hand, not over a mile distant, as we knew we had plenty of water and to spare. After having passed the opening we hauled the schooner up on the port tack, heading her well up to the northward, intending to find some quiet land-locked cove where we could anchor and repair the damages—small in detail, but quite grave in the aggregate—that we had received in our buffeting of the last ten days.

About eight bells in the forenoon we found ourselves well inside the land, and with a smooth sea and a good fair working breeze, we kept the land well on the port beam and gradually crawled in toward it.

At about 4 P. M. we estimated that we were twenty miles inside the headlands, and having come to an arm of a bay trending well to the northward, we hauled the schooner sharp on a wind and steered into it; we discovered soon that it was about ten miles deep and thirty wide as near as we could judge; and as we came toward the head of the bay we found that we could run into a small inner bay of about three miles in area, with evidently smooth water and good anchorage. Into this inner bay or anchorage we quietly sailed and let go an anchor in six fathoms of water, and at a distance of about one mile from the shore.

When the sails were all properly furled, and everything put in "ship-shape and Bristol fashion," as the saying is amongst sailors, we had time to look about us; and the motion of the vessel having ceased, and the creaking of the masts and cordage, the flapping of the sails, and the usual noises of the sea, having come to an end, we were struck with the awful and sublime solitude of our surroundings. By this time the moon had risen, and by its light we saw the shadowy shapes of monstrous cliffs and miniature headlands covered with tangled forests of a species of pine, mirrored in the little bay in which we hung at anchor; but not one sound of life, no lights on shore, no cry of bird or beast, but the depressing, awful solitude of an unknown land; no noise except the graceful rise of the "Good Luck" to the miniature waves of the bay as she lay at anchor with twenty fathoms of chain out. We all spoke in whispers, so awe-striking was the scenery, and when we set the anchor watch and turned in it was unanimously conceded that we had little to fear in landing on the morrow either from natives or wild beasts.

Glad enough were we, after our long fight with the stormy ocean, to turn into our berths. It was chilly, although now past the middle of October, yet we saw no snow upon the ground, and the air had the smell of spring and verdure. This was easily accounted for when we remembered that in reality we were in the latter part of April as to seasons, and that we were no further south, than Great Britain is north, as concerns latitude. No doubt, also, the climate was favorably affected by this great arm of salt water penetrating the land. At any rate we had nothing to complain of on the score of ice and snow, which we should have found in plenty had we arrived a month or two earlier. Our captain had some very