rades"--Dangerous reefs--Run into harbour
unawares, on a dark and stormy night--At Caravellas--Fine
weather--A gale--Port St. Paulo--Treacherous natives--Sail for
Bahia.

July 30th, early in the day, and after a pleasant visit at the cape, we
sailed for the north, securing first a few sea shells to be cherished,
with the _Thetis_ relics, in remembrance of a most enjoyable visit to
the hospitable shores of Cape Frio.

Having now doubled Cape Frio, a prominent point in our voyage, and
having had the seaworthiness of our little ship thoroughly tested, as
already told; and seeing, moreover, that we had nothing to fear from
common small fry of the sea (one of its greatest monsters having failed
to capsize us), we stood on with greater confidence than ever, but
watchful, nevertheless, for any strange event that might happen.

A fresh polar wind hurried us on, under shortened sail, toward the
softer "trades" of the tropics, but, veering to the eastward by
midnight, it brought us well in with the land. Then, "Larboard watch,
ahoy! all hands on deck and turn out reefs," was the cry. To weather
Cape St. Thome we must lug on all sail. And we go over the shoals with a
boiling sea and current in our favour. In twenty-four hours from Cape
Frio, we had lowered the Southern Cross three degrees--180 miles.

Sweeping by the cape, the canoe sometimes standing on end, and sometimes
buried in the deep hollow of the sea, we sunk the light on St. Thome
soon out of sight and stood on with flowing sheet. The wind on the
following day settled into regular south-east "trades," and our cedar
canoe skipped briskly along, over friendly seas that were leaping toward
home, doffing their crests onward and forward, but never back, and the
splashing waves against her sides, then rippling along the thin cedar
planks between the crew and eternity, vibrated enchanting music to the
ear, while confidence grew in the bark that was HOMEWARD BOUND.

But coming upon coral reefs, of a dark night, while we listened to the
dismal tune of the seas breaking over them with an eternal roar, how
intensely lonesome they were! no sign of any living thing in sight,
except, perhaps, the phosphorescent streaks of a hungry shark, which
told of bad company in our wake, and made the gloom of the place more
dismal still.

One night we made shelter under the lee of the extensive reefs called
the Paredes (walls), without seeing the breakers at all in the dark