As I still doubted, he said he would leave it to John, who was the oldest seaman aboard, and would know, if anybody did. John, to be sure, was the oldest, and at the same time the most ignorant, man in the ship; but I consented to have him called. The cook stated the matter to him, and John, as I anticipated, sided with the cook, and said that he himself had been in a ship where they had a head wind for a fortnight, and the captain found out at last that one of the men, with whom he had had same hard words a short time before, was a Fin, and immediately told him if he didn't stop the head wind he would shut him down in the fore peak. The Fin would not give in, and the captain shut him down in the fore peak, and would not give him anything to eat. The Fin held out for a day and a half, when he could not stand it any longer, and did something or other which brought the wind round again, and they let him up. ``Dar,'' said the cook, ``what you tink o' dat?'' I told him I had no doubt it was true, and that it would have been odd if the wind had not changed in fifteen days, Fin or no Fin. ``O,'' says he, ``go 'way! You tink, 'cause you been to college, you know better dan anybody. You know better dan dem as 'as seen it wid der own eyes. You wait till you've been to sea as long as I have, and den you'll know.'' CHAPTER VII We continued sailing along with a fair wind and fine weather until-- Tuesday, November 25th, when at daylight we saw the island of Juan Fernandez directly ahead, rising like a deep blue cloud out of the sea. We were then probably nearly seventy miles from it; and so high and so blue did it appear that I mistook it for a cloud resting over the island, and looked for the island under it, until it gradually turned to a deader and greener color, and I could mark the inequalities upon its surface. At length we could distinguish trees and rocks; and by the afternoon this beautiful island lay fairly before us, and we directed our course to the only harbor. Arriving at the entrance soon after sundown, we found a Chilian man-of-war brig, the only vessel, coming out. She hailed us; and an officer on board, whom we supposed to be an American, advised us to run in before night, and said that they were bound to Valparaiso. We ran immediately for the anchorage, but, owing to the winds which drew about the mountains and came to us in flaws from different points of the compass, we did not come to an anchor until nearly midnight. We had a boat ahead all the time that we were working in, and those aboard ship were continually bracing the yards about for every puff that struck us, until about twelve o'clock, when we came to in forty fathoms water, and our anchor struck bottom for the first time since we left Boston,-- one hundred and three days. We were then divided into three watches, and thus stood out the remainder of the night.