"One hour,
boy, I will grant you, to shut your mouth," the mate said, taking out
his watch, "and that you need lay nothing to my door hereafter." To
make the most of this hour, I got my companions at the oars, and we
all pulled with hearty good-will. So much importance did I attach to
every fathom of distance made, that we did not rise from our seats
until the mate told us to stop rowing, for the hour was up. As for
himself, he had not risen either, but kept looking behind him to the
eastward, still hoping to see land somewhere in that quarter.
My heart beat violently as I got upon the thwart, but there lay my
hazy object, now never dipping at all. I shouted "land ho!" Marble
jumped up on a thwart, too and no longer disputed my word. It was
land, he admitted, and it must be the island of Bourbon, which we had
passed to the northward, and must soon have given a hopelessly wide
berth. We went to the oars again with renewed life, and soon made the
boat spin. All that day we kept rowing, until about five in the
afternoon, when we found ourselves within a few leagues of the island
of Bourbon, where we were met by a fresh breeze from the southward,
and were compelled to make sail. The wind was dead on end, and we made
stretches under the lee of the island, going about as we found the sea
getting to be too heavy for us, as was invariably the case whenever we
got too far east or west.
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