We passed to
leeward of Ua-huka, skirted the southern edge of Nuka-hiva, and that
night, in driving squalls and inky darkness, fought our way in to an
anchorage in the narrow bay of Taiohae. The anchor rumbled down to
the blatting of wild goats on the cliffs, and the air we breathed
was heavy with the perfume of flowers. The traverse was
accomplished. Sixty days from land to land, across a lonely sea
above whose horizons never rise the straining sails of ships.
CHAPTER X--TYPEE
To the eastward Ua-huka was being blotted out by an evening rain-
squall that was fast overtaking the Snark. But that little craft,
her big spinnaker filled by the southeast trade, was making a good
race of it. Cape Martin, the southeasternmost point of Nuku-hiva,
was abeam, and Comptroller Bay was opening up as we fled past its
wide entrance, where Sail Rock, for all the world like the spritsail
of a Columbia River salmon-boat, was making brave weather of it in
the smashing southeast swell.
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