And when it happens, as in our case,
that the haven thus gained is not merely a part of a great continent
which the stupidest ship could not miss, if it only sailed far enough,
but is actually a small volcanic island, a mere dot among those wild
waves, a thing which one might easily have passed in the night,
unsuspecting, and which yet was not so passed,--it really seems like the
maddest piece of good-luck, as if one should go to sea in a bowl, hoping
somewhere or other to land on the edge of a tea-cup.
As next day we stumbled on deck in the foggy dawn, the dim island five
miles off seemed only dawning too, a shapeless thing, half-formed out of
chaos, as if the leagues of gray ocean had grown weary of their eternal
loneliness, and bungled into something like land at last. The phrase
"_making_ land" at once became the simple and necessary expression; we
had come upon the very process itself. Nearer still, the cliffs five
hundred feet in height, and the bare conical hills of the interior,
divided everywhere by cane-hedges into a regular checker-work of
cultivation, prolonged the mystery; and the glimpses of white villages
scarcely seemed to break the spell. Point after point we passed,--great
shoulders of volcanic mountain thrust out to meet the sea, with steep
green ravines furrowed in between them; and when at last we rounded the
Espalamarca, and the white walls and the Moorish towers of Horta stood
revealed before us, and a stray sunbeam pierced the clouds on the great
mountain Pico across the bay, and the Spanish steamship in the harbor
flung out her gorgeous ensign of gold and blood--then, indeed, we felt
that all the glowing cup of the tropics was proffered to our lips, and
the dream of our voyage stood fulfilled.
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