Once more the hatches are removed; once more I breathe the sweet air of heaven, for not a grain of powder has been burned through all this fearful conflict; once more my messmates rush into our little cabin and regale themselves with copious draughts of absinthe, and I am pressed to the proud bosom of Thanaron, who is restored to me without a scar to disfigure his handsome little body. I grew used to these weekly wars, and before we came in sight of our green haven, there was not a Prussian left in the Pacific. It is impossible that any nation, though they be schooled to hardships, could hope to survive such a succession of disastrous conflicts. On the whole, I like sham battles; they are deuced exciting, and they don't hurt.
How different, how very different those sleepy days when we were drifting on towards the Marquesas Islands! The silvery phaetons darted overhead like day-stars shooting from their spheres. The seaweed grew denser, and a thousand floating things,--broken branches with a few small leaves attached, the husk of a cocoanut, or straws such as any dove from any ark would be glad to seize upon,--these gave us ample food for speculation. "Piloted by the slow, unwilling winds," we came close to the star-lit Nouka Hiva, and shortened sail right under its fragrant shadow. It was a glorious night. There was the subtile odour of earth in the warm, faint air, and before us that impenetrable shadow that we knew to be an island, yet whose outlines were traceable only by the obliterated stars.
At sunrise we were on deck, and, looking westward, saw the mists melt away like a veil swept from before the face of a dusky Venus just rising from the waves. The island seemed to give out a kind of magnetic heat that made our blood tingle. We gravitated toward it with an almost irresistible impulse. Something had to be done before we yielded to the fascinations of this savage enchantress. Our course lay to the windward of the south-eastern point of the land; but, finding that we could not weather it, we went off before the light wind and drifted down the northern coast, swinging an hour or more under the lee of some parched rocks, eyeing the "Needles,"--the slender and symmetrical peaks so called,--and then we managed to work our way out into the open sea again, and were saved.