Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/69

 other two right side up, while a fourth, in the horizon, showed nothing but the hull and the stumps of the lower

MIRAGE.—THE PEACOCK.

mast, as in the sketch. On board the Peacock, at the same time, they had three reflections of our ship. Science tells us that these reflections are caused by concave surfaces of the atmosphere when it consists of warmer  and colder strata. The ship Relief came through the Straits of Magellan and surveyed them. In doing so she came near being wrecked off Nor Island, at which  place she lost all her anchors.

MIRAGE.—THE PEACOCK.

On the 12th of May, at daylight, we made the coast