This accident made us still more short-handed. There were but three of us left to work the vessel. Luckily, I had one good man with me, in the person of Ted Milner, who not only did the cooking, but worked hard on deck during my watch as well as on the other, and was very cheery over it all the while, too.
When we were outside, we took two reefs down in the mainsail before hoisting it, and close-reefed the foresail, for it was evident that we were in for a spell of squally weather.
We had better luck now than during our previous attempt at reaching Trinidad, for the wind, instead of being right ahead from the south-east, kept shifting backwards and forwards between north and east, so that we could always lay our course on the port tack, and could often do so with our sheets well off. But the wind was squally and uncertain, and for much of the time the sea was rough, so that we were eight days in reaching the island.
At dawn on January 29, we sighted Trinidad, right ahead, and in the afternoon we were about two miles off, opposite to the Ninepin rock. It was blowing hard from the eastward, and the sea was, I think, running higher than on any occasion since we left Southampton. The surf on the island was far heavier than we had ever seen it before, and was breaking on every portion of the coast with great fury.
We now ran before the wind towards South-west Bay, and the squalls that occasionally swept down the ravines were so fierce that we sailed with foresail down and the tack of our reefed mainsail triced well up. We saw that the seas were dashing completely over the pier, and sending great fountains of spray high into the air. When we opened out South-west Bay the scene before us was terribly grand. Huge green rollers, with plumes of snowy spray, were breaking on the sandy beach; and the waves were dashing up the sides of Noah's Ark, and the Sugarloaf to an immense height, the cliffs being wet with spray quite 200 feet up. The loud roaring of the seas was echoed by the mountains, and the frequent squalls whistled and howled frightfully among the crags, so that even the wild sea-birds were alarmed at the commotion of the elements: for they had risen in multitudes from all the rocks around the bay, and were flying hither and thither in a scared fashion, while their melancholy cries added to the weirdness of the general effect.