CHAPTER TWENTY.
ARRIVAL AT TRISTAN D'ACUNHA.
"This air prime, now ain't it ?" said the skipper to Fritz, as the ship, with her nose pointing almost south, was driving away before the north- west wind and making some ten knots an hour.
"Yes, she's going along all right," replied he; adding frankly, however, "I should like it all the better, though, if the vessel didn't roll about so much." "Roll ?" exclaimed Captain Brown indignantly; "call this rolling?
Why, Jee-rusalem, she only gives a kinder bit of a lurch now an' ag'in! I thought you would hev got your sea-legs on by this time." Fritz could only bow to this statement, of course; but, all due deference to the skipper, nevertheless, the _Pilot's Bride_ did roll, and roll most unmercifully, too.
She was just like a huge porpoise wallowing in the water! It may be remembered that she had sailed from port light, with a pretty considerable freeboard; and now, with the wind almost right aft, so that she had no lateral pressure to steady her--as would have been the case if the breeze had been abeam or on her quarter--she listed first to port and then to starboard, with the "send" of the sea, as regularly as the swing of a clock's pendulum.

Really, the oscillation made it almost as impossible for Fritz to move about as if the ship had been contending with all the powers of the elements in a heavy storm, whereas the skipper said she was only "going easy," with a fair wind! Why, the "breeze" had not lasted a day, before nearly every particle of glass and crockery-ware in the steward's cabin was smashed to atoms; while preventer stays had to be rove to save the masts from parting company.
Roll, eh?
She did roll--roll with a vengeance! Fortunately, this did not last long; the wind shifting round to the north-east, after a three days' spell from the west, which brought the ship on a bow line, steering, as she was, south-east and by south.

Had not this change come when it did, "the old tub would hev rolled her bottom out," as Mr Slater, the whilom deck hand, "guessed" one morning to Fritz, while the crew were engaged in washing decks.
Of course, the brothers themselves had many a chat together while the voyage lasted, talking over their plans as well as chatting about the different scenes and circumstances surrounding the endless panorama of sea and sky, sky and sea, now daily unfolded before them.
Naturally--to Fritz, at least--all was new; and it was deeply interesting to him to notice the alteration in the aspect of the heavens which each night produced as the ship ran to the southward.

The north star had disappeared with its pointers, as well as other familiar stellar bodies belonging to higher latitudes; but, a new and more brilliant constellation had risen up in the sky within his new range of view, which each evening became more and more distinct.
This was the Southern Cross, as it is called, consisting of four stars, three of the first magnitude and the fourth somewhat smaller, arranged in the form of an oblique crucifix, pointing across the firmament "athwartship-like," as the skipper explained one night-watch when the brothers were looking out together.

Only once in the year, Captain Brown said, is this cross perfectly perpendicular towards the zenith; for, as it circles round our planet, it reverses its position, finally turning upside-down.
When the _Pilot's Bride_ ceased to roll and began to make steady way towards Tristan, with the wind from the northward and eastwards on her beam, she ran along steadily on one tack, with hardly a lurch, covering some two hundred miles a day as regularly as the log was hove and the sun taken at noon.
All this time, no sight could now have been more glorious than the heavens presented each night after sunset.