Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/66

50 start, but the day before that appointed for sailing a ship hove in sight, which proved to be the United States frigate Portsmouth, Captain Downs, which had been on the coast of Sumatra chasing the natives for outrages perpetrated on the crew of a pepper ship. Captain Downs, on learning from the harbor master that some American boys and an English captain designed going to sea in so small a boat, intended to have stopped them. However, they knew nothing of this, and being eager to be off, were several miles on their voyage before they were observed from the frigate and a whaleboat sent to overtake them. Mistaking it for a native fruit boat, and having a fair wind, the adventurers sailed away from the only opportunity which had yet offered of a comfortable voyage home.

It was not a too happy voyage on which a company of seven had set out—four boys, two men, and Captain Clarke. For two weeks they were scudding under a bob jib with the roughest of weather, after which the wind moderated, and at the end of forty days they made the Island of Massafurp, about thirty degrees west of Valparaiso, their destined port, but were unable to land. The whole distance to Valparaiso was four thousand nine hundred miles, and was overcome in sixty-eight days. But what days! What suffering and weariness were compressed into a voyage of that length in a small boat! The most fertile imagination fails to adequately picture it.

"Our cutter," says my interlocutor, "rounded the head at sunrise, going in. The lookout on the mole reported a strange craft. As soon as the signal was seen on the Portsmouth, which was lying there, the commodore ordered his gig and pulled off alongside of us. His first words were, 'You young devils, you ought to be thrashed, every one of you, for risking your lives