As it was, however, my own
blood was all that was spilt--and from the trifling accident of
sometimes breaking the flesh against a cleat or a pin which came in
the way when I was in haste. Sea-cuts in my hands from pulling on
hard, wet ropes were sometimes painful and often bled freely; but
these healed when I finally got away from the strait into fine
weather.
After clearing Snug Bay I hauled the sloop to the wind, repaired the
windlass, and hove the anchor to the hawse, catted it, and then
stretched across to a port of refuge under a high mountain about six
miles away, and came to in nine fathoms close under the face of a
perpendicular cliff. Here my own voice answered back, and I named the
place "Echo Mountain." Seeing dead trees farther along where the shore
was broken, I made a landing for fuel, taking, besides my ax, a rifle,
which on these days I never left far from hand; but I saw no living
thing here, except a small spider, which had nested in a dry log that
I boated to the sloop. The conduct of this insect interested me now
more than anything else around the wild place. In my cabin it met,
oddly enough, a spider of its own size and species that had come all
the way from Boston--a very civil little chap, too, but mighty spry.
Well, the Fuegian threw up its antennae for a fight; but my little
Bostonian downed it at once, then broke its legs, and pulled them off,
one by one, so dexterously that in less than three minutes from the
time the battle began the Fuegian spider didn't know itself from a
fly.
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