it. Sugar is their daily bread, as it were. And I was coming to
them for a cargo of sugar in the hope of the crop having been good
and of the freights being high.

Mr. Burns, my chief mate, made out the land first; and very soon I
became entranced by this blue, pinnacled apparition, almost
transparent against the light of the sky, a mere emanation, the
astral body of an island risen to greet me from afar. It is a rare
phenomenon, such a sight of the Pearl at sixty miles off. And I
wondered half seriously whether it was a good omen, whether what
would meet me in that island would be as luckily exceptional as
this beautiful, dreamlike vision so very few seamen have been
privileged to behold.

But horrid thoughts of business interfered with my enjoyment of an
accomplished passage. I was anxious for success and I wished, too,
to do justice to the flattering latitude of my owners' instructions
contained in one noble phrase: "We leave it to you to do the best
you can with the ship." . . . All the world being thus given me for
a stage, my abilities appeared to me no bigger than a pinhead.

Meantime the wind dropped, and Mr. Burns began to make disagreeable
remarks about my usual bad luck. I believe it was his devotion for
me which made him critically outspoken on every occasion. All the
same, I would not have put up with his humours if it had not been
my lot at one time to nurse him through a desperate illness at sea.
After snatching him out of the jaws of death, so to speak, it would
have been absurd to throw away such an efficient officer. But
sometimes I wished he would dismiss himself.