“Gee, that’s a high mountain!” exclaimed Tom. “Will we have time to go ashore, Captain?”
“Plenty o’ time,” the skipper assured him. “We’ll be here a couple of days—have to give the folks time to get the supplies together and down to the shore, and you can go all over the place in that time if you’re as much like goats as the boys here are. Yes, pretty good-sized mountain, that—over 8,000 feet high and an old volcano.”
By the time the captain had finished speaking, the island loomed close ahead and the boys could see tiny houses and buildings scattered about on the sloping hillsides. The coast seemed forbidding and barren with heavy surf breaking everywhere; but as they drew nearer, a covelike harbor appeared, and cautiously feeling his way in, and constantly scanning landmarks on the shore, Captain Edwards piloted the bark towards the island until the sky-piercing cone of the volcano appeared to overhang the _Hector’s_ masts.
At braces and halliards stood the crew, ready for instant action when the order was given to swing the yards. In the bows stood the second mate and his men ready to let the anchor go, and, to the boys, it seemed as if the bark would pile herself upon the rocks before the captain’s voice roared out the orders, the yards swung to the crash of slatting sails and the creak of tackle; the roar of chain and the splash of anchor were flung back in thundering echoes from the cliffs, and the _Hector_ swung motionless before the out-of-the-world island.
Long before the bark had come to anchor, boats were putting off from shore, and in a few moments, a miniature flotilla surrounded the _Hector_. Much to the boys’ surprise,—for somehow, despite what the captain had told them, they had expected to see roughly clad, unkempt, swarthy people—the men who were in the boats were fine-looking, rosy-cheeked, bronzed-skinned young giants, neatly clad in blue dungaree or serge and differing in no way from men who might be seen at any seaport in New England.
Laughing and talking, they clambered up the bark’s sides and came aboard, greeting Captain Edwards and others by name, shaking hands with every one and speaking with a peculiar accent that seemed to be a cross between cockney English and down-east Yankee,—impossible to describe.