  The “Monte” was the first of our vessels, and was made out of a flat piece of wood about five inches long, shaped at one end for the bow. She had two masts of very thin wood, and was rigged as a fore and aft schooner with paper sails, which had holes in them so as to fasten them to the masts. She had a stone underneath her to keep her upright, and a piece of string tied round her, amidships, to keep on the stone. In the picture the stone is shown through the water, so that you can see how it was fastened on, but it did not really show like that. THE “MONTE’S” VOYAGEShe started from No Name Strait with wind and tide; it was blowing a gale at the time—of course you will understand that it was not blowing a gale to us, but in proportion to the size of her, it must have been a gale to her. She kept her course toward the land, going by the Round Channel, as we had not then discovered the passage through the Two Snags she then put her helm to port and bore away for mid-stream to avoid the nifty Snags that lie at the foot of the bluff called Pirate’s Leap, called that because a poet who had been a pirate, I expect, was thinking about a poem when he ought to have been shoving the vessel off the rocks, and so he fell in. The “Monte” then put her head south-west by south, half south, a little southerly, sir, and tried to make the current called the Bully Bowline, but she kept too far to the west’ard, and so she got caught by the other current, the wrong one, called the Blackwall Hitch. The “Monte’s” skipper got excited then, However, she weathered them and dashed on over the Marbley Shallows; we called them that because the stones under the water used to roll along like a lot of little marbles. She kept a fine course from that on, and went at a great pace, about fifteen knots; once she stuck her nose in the bank, but the sails swung her round, so on she went and ran beautifully into Safety Cove. But, like a silly, her skipper came out of it again before we could tell him not to, and hit against, oh! such a nasty rock; it heaved her on her beamends, and then she turned very slowly round until her masts and sails were underneath, and her stone keel on top. And that was the end of her. This was what the Pirate Poet made about her: And now by Gara rushes, When stars are blinking white; And sleep has stilled the thrushes, There, where the stones are gleamin’, A passer-by can hark To the old drowned “Monte” seamen A-singing through the dark. There, where the gnats are pesky, They sing like anything; They sing like Jean de Reszke, This is the song they sing: Down in the pebbled ridges Our old bones sing and shout; We see the dancing midges, We feel the skipping trout. Our bones are green and weeded, Our bones are old and wet; But the noble deeds that we did We never can forget. |
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