But we were sailing through a wide, shining scene of commanding beauty, lofty and gloriously coloured, and the influence of it, I don't doubt, rescued me from the dark mood imagination might have raised. The breeze blew hot, but the sweetness of flowers and fruit was in it, and the scent of the land was brisk with the salt of the sea. In a very little while the seamen had clothed the brig from the main-royal yard to the waterways, and as she floated onwards, _now_ slightly curtseying to a small breathing of swell, the mountains went with her, and the ships astern closed into clusters past the tail of our mirror-bright line of wake. The mountains towered on our left; Cape Town vanished, and we softly drove with a noise of fountains on either hand past rich curves of shore on whose margin the huge Atlantic comber formed and fell in snowstorms with white houses beyond the foam like models in ivory shining amid the greenery. And all the time we were alone! _This_ was the wonderful feature of our departure. I could not see the smallest boat in motion. The water was like a great lonely lake, and the silence on the face of the mountains was in the wind, in a presence that seemed to _compel_ isolation for us, hushing all life off the face of the bay down to where the ships were lying too far off to trouble the sense of solitude. The crew were now occupied in coiling away the rigging and clearing up the decks, and I had an opportunity of viewing them. All were white men; there were eight, together with a cook and a boy to wait upon us aft, making with captain and mate twelve of a company, which was plenty. Cliffe had told me he would not ship a certificated second mate; the man who went as boatswain would relieve the mate and stand a watch. That man was a wiry, middle-aged seaman; he wore a spread of grey whisker scissors-trimmed, close to his face, and dark eager eyes which he rolled quickly as a monkey; he sang out briskly, and sprang about the decks. Little Captain Cliffe, observing that I watched the man, came and stood beside me and spoke up softly to my ear: 'I engaged that chap because of his knowledge of the ice. He told me he was seven years whaling in the Pacific and Southern oceans. He is the most wonderful jumper I ever heard of.' 'So old as he is?'