Chapter 12

"Sound trumpets, ho!--weigh anchor--loosen sail--
The seaward-flying banners chide delay;
As if't were heaven that breathes this kindly gale,
Our life-like bark beneath it speeds away.--"
PINKNEY.

The stout ship Crisis had, like certain persons, done a good thing
purely by chance, Had her exploit happened in the year 1519, instead
of that of 1800, the renowned passage we had just escaped from would
have been called the Crisis Straits, a better name than the mongrel
appellation it now bears; which is neither English, nor Portuguese.
The ship had been lost, like a man in the woods, and came out nearer
home, than those in her could have at all expected. The "bloody
currents" had been at the bottom of the mistake, though this time they
did good, instead of harm. Any one who has been thoroughly lost on a
heath, or in a forest, or, even in a town, can comprehend how the head
gets turned on such occasions, and will understand the manner in which
we had mystified ourselves.

I shall remember the feelings of delight with which I looked around
me, as the ship passed out into the open ocean, to my dying day. There
lay the vast Pacific, its long, regular waves rolling in towards the
coast, in mountain-like ridges, it is true, but under a radiant sun,
and in a bright atmosphere. Everybody was cheered by the view, and
never did orders sound more pleasant in my ears, than when the captain
called out, in a cheerful voice, "to man the weather braces." This
command was given the instant it was prudent; and the ship went
foaming past the last cape with the speed of a courser. Studding-sails
were then set, and, when the sun was dipping, we had a good offing,
were driving to the northward under everything we could carry, and had
a fair prospect of an excellent run from the neighbourhood of Terra
del Fuego, and its stormy seas.

It is not my intention to dwell on our passage along the western coast
of South America. A voyage to the Pacific was a very different thing
in the year 1800, however, from what it is to-day. The power of Spain
was then completely in the ascendant, intercourse with any nation but
the mother country, being strictly prohibited. It is true, a species
of commerce, that was called the "forced trade on the Spanish Main"
existed under that code of elastic morals, which adapts the maxim of
"your purse or your life" to modern diplomacy, as well as to the
habits of the highwayman. According to divers masters in the art of
ethics now flourishing among ourselves, more especially in the
atmosphere of the journals of the commercial communities, the people
that "_can_ trade and _won't_ trade, _must be made to trade_." At the
commencement