light thrown up
as regularly as the beats of the long ocean swells, and always they
seemed just a little nearer. It was evidently a coral reef,--of this I
had not the slightest doubt,--and a bad reef at that. Worse still,
there might be other reefs ahead forming a bight into which the
current would sweep me, and where I should be hemmed in and finally
wrecked. I had not sailed these waters since a lad, and lamented the
day I had allowed on board the goat that ate my chart. I taxed my
memory of sea lore, of wrecks on sunken reefs, and of pirates harbored
among coral reefs where other ships might not come, but nothing that I
could think of applied to the island of Tobago, save the one wreck of
Robinson Crusoe's ship in the fiction, and that gave me little
information about reefs. I remembered only that in Crusoe's case he
kept his powder dry. "But there she booms again," I cried, "and how
close the flash is now! Almost aboard was that last breaker! But
you'll go by, _Spray_, old girl! 'T is abeam now! One surge more! and
oh, one more like that will clear your ribs and keel!" And I slapped
her on the transom, proud of her last noble effort to leap clear of
the danger, when a wave greater than the rest threw her higher than
before, and, behold, from the crest of it was revealed at once all
there was of the reef. I fell back in a coil of rope, speechless and
amazed, not distressed, but rejoiced. Aladdin's lamp! My fisherman's
own lantern! It was the great revolving light on the island of
Trinidad, thirty miles away, throwing flashes over the waves, which
had deceived me! The orb of the light was now dipping on the horizon,
and how glorious was the sight of it! But, dear Father Neptune, as I
live, after a long life at sea, and much among corals, I would have
made a solemn declaration to that reef! Through all the rest of the
night I saw imaginary reefs, and not knowing what moment the sloop
might fetch up on a real one, I tacked off and on till daylight, as
nearly as possible in the same track, all for the want of a chart. I
could have nailed the St. Helena goat's pelt to the deck.

My course was now for Grenada, to which I carried letters from
Mauritius. About midnight of the 22d of May I arrived at the island,
and cast anchor in the roads off the town of St. George, entering the
inner harbor at daylight on the morning of the 23d, which made
forty-two days' sailing from the Cape of Good Hope, It was a good run,
and I doffed