Chapter Eleven.

Chapter Eleven.A Catastrophe.The Whirling Columns—A Stupendous Spectacle—We lose our New Friends.“Still round and round the fluid vortex flies,Scattering dun night, and horror through the skies,The swift volution and the enormous trainLet sages versed in Nature’s lore explain;The horrid apparition still draws nigh,And white with foam the whirling surges fly.”The breeze was now steady, though gentle, and Max and Morton set to work rigging the sail, which for the last two days had served as an awning.During our mutual inquiries and explanations, the Frenchman had kept the canoe close alongside of us; he now braced round the yard of his triangular sail, which had been shaking in the wind, and began to draw ahead. The young native who had interfered so effectually in Max’s behalf, observing the eagerness with which we had devoured the doughy mass of pounded bread-fruit, tossed another cake of the same substance into the boat as we separated, which, when distributed, afforded a morsel or two to each of us. I had particularly observed this boy on the first approach of the canoe, from the circumstance of his occupying a small raised platform, or daïs, of wicker-work, covered with mats.As our sail had been entirely disengaged from the mast and gaff, it was quite a piece of work to rig it again for service, and by the time this was effected, the canoe was some distance ahead of us: though she was far better adapted than the yawl for sailing with a light breeze, yet we nearly held our own with her, after once getting fairly under way.When the wind first sprang up, the sky had become slightly overcast with broken masses of clouds, of a peculiar and unusual appearance. From the most considerable of these masses, radiated, as from a centre, long lines, like pencils of light, running in straight, regularly diverging rays, to the ocean.We had been sailing in the wake of the canoe, perhaps half an hour, when I observed in the south-west a singularly shaped cloud, to which a dark column, extending downward to the sea, appeared to be attached. This column was quite narrow at the base, but enlarged as it rose, until just below the point of union with the cloud, it spread outward like a gothic pillar, diverging into arches as it meets the roof. I surveyed this strange spectacle for several minutes before its true character occurred to me. It was already observed by those in the canoe, and from their exclamations and gestures, they evidently viewed it with apprehension and dread.It was moving slowly towards us, and we also watched, with feelings in which alarm began to predominate over curiosity and interest, the majestic approach of this vast body of water, (as we now perceived it to be), held by some secret power suspended between heaven and earth.“It appears to be moving north before the wind,” said Arthur, at length; “if it keeps on its present course, it will pass by, at a safe distance on our left.”This seemed probable; but we felt disposed to give it a still wider berth, and shifting the sail, we steered in a north-easterly direction. Scarcely had our sail filled on the new tack, when a cry of terror again drew attention to the canoe, and the natives were seen pointing to another water-spout, moving slowly round from the east to the north, and threatening to intercept us in the course we were pursuing. This, unlike the first, was a cylindrical column of water, of about the same diameter throughout its entire length, extending in a straight and unbroken line from the ocean to the heavens. Its upper extremity was lost amid a mass of clouds, in which I fancied I could perceive the effects of the gradual diffusion of the water drawn from the sea, as it wound its way upward with a rapid spiral motion, and poured into that elevated reservoir. As the process went on, the cloud grew darker, and seemed to stoop with its accumulating weight of waters.Our position was fast becoming embarrassing and dangerous. We had changed our course to avoid the first water-spout and now we were confronted by another still nearer at hand.For a moment all was confusion, indecision, and dismay.“Quick! round with her head, and let her go right before the wind!” shouted Max hurriedly.“That would be running directly into the danger,” cried Morton, “they are both moving north, and approaching each other.”“Then let’s pull down the sail, until they are at a safe distance.”“I would rather keep her under headway,” said Arthur, “or how could we escape, if one of them should move down upon us!”“What can we do, then?” exclaimed Max; “we can’t sail in the teeth of the wind.”“I am for going about to the left again, and steering as near the wind as possible,” said Arthur; “the one on that side is farthest north.”This was the course which the natives had already adopted, and they were now steering nearly south-west. We immediately followed their example, and the fore and aft rig of the yawl enabled us to sail nearer the wind than they could do.In a few moments the funnel-shaped water-spout, which we had first seen, had passed off northward, and was at such a distance as to remove all apprehensions on account of it. Not so, however, with the second; for hardly had we tacked again, when, notwithstanding that we were to windward of it, it began to move rapidly towards us.Its course was not direct and uniform, but it veered now to the right and now to the left, rendering it difficult for us to decide which way to steer in order to avoid it.Arthur sat at the helm, pale, but quite calm and collected, his eyes steadfastly fixed on the advancing column, while Johnny crouched at his side, holding fast one of his hands in both his own. Morton held the sheet and stood ready to shift the sail, as the emergency might require.Onward it came, towering to the skies, and darkening the ocean with its impending bulk; soon we could perceive the powerful agitation of the water far around its base, and within the vortex of its influence: a dense cloud of spray, thrown off in its rapid revolutions, enveloped its lower extremity: the rushing sound of the water as it was drawn upward, was also distinctly audible. And now it seemed to take a straight course for the canoe. The natives, with the exception of the boy, threw themselves down in the bottom of the boat in abject terror; it was, indeed, an appalling spectacle, and calculated to shake the stoutest heart, to see that vast mass of water, enough as it seemed, to swamp the navies of the world, suspended so strangely over them.The Frenchman appeared to be endeavouring to get the natives to make some exertion, but in vain. He and the boy then seized a couple of paddles, and made a frantic effort to escape the threatened danger; but the whirling pillar was almost upon them, and it seemed as though they were devoted to certain destruction. The Frenchman now threw down his paddle, and sat with his hands folded on his breast, awaiting his fate. The boy, after speaking earnestly to his companion, who merely shook his head, stood up in the prow of the canoe, and casting one shuddering look at the dark column, he joined his hands above his head, and plunged into the sea. In a moment he came to the surface, and struck out vigorously towards us.The canoe seemed already within the influence of the water-spout, and was drawn towards it with the violently agitated waters around its base. The Frenchman, unable longer to endure the awful sight bowed his head upon his hands; another moment, and he was lost to sight in the circle of mist and spray that enveloped the foot of the column; then a strong oscillation began to be visible in the body of the water-spout; it swayed heavily to and fro; the cloud at its apex seemed to stoop, and the whole mass broke and fell, with a noise that might have been heard for miles. The sea, far around, was crushed into smoothness by the shock; immediately where the vast pillar had stood, it boiled like a caldron; then a succession of waves, white with foam, came circling outward from the spot, extending even to us.The native boy, who swam faster than we sailed, was already within forty or fifty yards of us, and we put about and steered for him: in a moment he was alongside, and Arthur, reaching out his hand, helped him into the boat.The sea had now resumed its usual appearance, and every trace of the water-spout was gone, so that it was impossible to fix the spot where it had broken. Not a vestige of the canoe, or of her ill-fated company, was anywhere to be seen. We sailed backward and forward in the neighbourhood of the place, carefully scrutinising the surface in every direction, and traversing several times the spot, as nearly as we could determine it, where the canoe had last been seen: but our search was fruitless: the long billows swelled and subsided with their wonted regularity, and their rippled summits glittered as brightly in the sunshine as ever, but they revealed no trace of those whom they had so suddenly and remorselessly engulfed.The water-spout which had first been seen, had disappeared, and a few heavy clouds in the zenith alone remained, as evidences of the terrific phenomenon which we had just witnessed.

“Still round and round the fluid vortex flies,Scattering dun night, and horror through the skies,The swift volution and the enormous trainLet sages versed in Nature’s lore explain;The horrid apparition still draws nigh,And white with foam the whirling surges fly.”

“Still round and round the fluid vortex flies,Scattering dun night, and horror through the skies,The swift volution and the enormous trainLet sages versed in Nature’s lore explain;The horrid apparition still draws nigh,And white with foam the whirling surges fly.”

The breeze was now steady, though gentle, and Max and Morton set to work rigging the sail, which for the last two days had served as an awning.

During our mutual inquiries and explanations, the Frenchman had kept the canoe close alongside of us; he now braced round the yard of his triangular sail, which had been shaking in the wind, and began to draw ahead. The young native who had interfered so effectually in Max’s behalf, observing the eagerness with which we had devoured the doughy mass of pounded bread-fruit, tossed another cake of the same substance into the boat as we separated, which, when distributed, afforded a morsel or two to each of us. I had particularly observed this boy on the first approach of the canoe, from the circumstance of his occupying a small raised platform, or daïs, of wicker-work, covered with mats.

As our sail had been entirely disengaged from the mast and gaff, it was quite a piece of work to rig it again for service, and by the time this was effected, the canoe was some distance ahead of us: though she was far better adapted than the yawl for sailing with a light breeze, yet we nearly held our own with her, after once getting fairly under way.

When the wind first sprang up, the sky had become slightly overcast with broken masses of clouds, of a peculiar and unusual appearance. From the most considerable of these masses, radiated, as from a centre, long lines, like pencils of light, running in straight, regularly diverging rays, to the ocean.

We had been sailing in the wake of the canoe, perhaps half an hour, when I observed in the south-west a singularly shaped cloud, to which a dark column, extending downward to the sea, appeared to be attached. This column was quite narrow at the base, but enlarged as it rose, until just below the point of union with the cloud, it spread outward like a gothic pillar, diverging into arches as it meets the roof. I surveyed this strange spectacle for several minutes before its true character occurred to me. It was already observed by those in the canoe, and from their exclamations and gestures, they evidently viewed it with apprehension and dread.

It was moving slowly towards us, and we also watched, with feelings in which alarm began to predominate over curiosity and interest, the majestic approach of this vast body of water, (as we now perceived it to be), held by some secret power suspended between heaven and earth.

“It appears to be moving north before the wind,” said Arthur, at length; “if it keeps on its present course, it will pass by, at a safe distance on our left.”

This seemed probable; but we felt disposed to give it a still wider berth, and shifting the sail, we steered in a north-easterly direction. Scarcely had our sail filled on the new tack, when a cry of terror again drew attention to the canoe, and the natives were seen pointing to another water-spout, moving slowly round from the east to the north, and threatening to intercept us in the course we were pursuing. This, unlike the first, was a cylindrical column of water, of about the same diameter throughout its entire length, extending in a straight and unbroken line from the ocean to the heavens. Its upper extremity was lost amid a mass of clouds, in which I fancied I could perceive the effects of the gradual diffusion of the water drawn from the sea, as it wound its way upward with a rapid spiral motion, and poured into that elevated reservoir. As the process went on, the cloud grew darker, and seemed to stoop with its accumulating weight of waters.

Our position was fast becoming embarrassing and dangerous. We had changed our course to avoid the first water-spout and now we were confronted by another still nearer at hand.

For a moment all was confusion, indecision, and dismay.

“Quick! round with her head, and let her go right before the wind!” shouted Max hurriedly.

“That would be running directly into the danger,” cried Morton, “they are both moving north, and approaching each other.”

“Then let’s pull down the sail, until they are at a safe distance.”

“I would rather keep her under headway,” said Arthur, “or how could we escape, if one of them should move down upon us!”

“What can we do, then?” exclaimed Max; “we can’t sail in the teeth of the wind.”

“I am for going about to the left again, and steering as near the wind as possible,” said Arthur; “the one on that side is farthest north.”

This was the course which the natives had already adopted, and they were now steering nearly south-west. We immediately followed their example, and the fore and aft rig of the yawl enabled us to sail nearer the wind than they could do.

In a few moments the funnel-shaped water-spout, which we had first seen, had passed off northward, and was at such a distance as to remove all apprehensions on account of it. Not so, however, with the second; for hardly had we tacked again, when, notwithstanding that we were to windward of it, it began to move rapidly towards us.

Its course was not direct and uniform, but it veered now to the right and now to the left, rendering it difficult for us to decide which way to steer in order to avoid it.

Arthur sat at the helm, pale, but quite calm and collected, his eyes steadfastly fixed on the advancing column, while Johnny crouched at his side, holding fast one of his hands in both his own. Morton held the sheet and stood ready to shift the sail, as the emergency might require.

Onward it came, towering to the skies, and darkening the ocean with its impending bulk; soon we could perceive the powerful agitation of the water far around its base, and within the vortex of its influence: a dense cloud of spray, thrown off in its rapid revolutions, enveloped its lower extremity: the rushing sound of the water as it was drawn upward, was also distinctly audible. And now it seemed to take a straight course for the canoe. The natives, with the exception of the boy, threw themselves down in the bottom of the boat in abject terror; it was, indeed, an appalling spectacle, and calculated to shake the stoutest heart, to see that vast mass of water, enough as it seemed, to swamp the navies of the world, suspended so strangely over them.

The Frenchman appeared to be endeavouring to get the natives to make some exertion, but in vain. He and the boy then seized a couple of paddles, and made a frantic effort to escape the threatened danger; but the whirling pillar was almost upon them, and it seemed as though they were devoted to certain destruction. The Frenchman now threw down his paddle, and sat with his hands folded on his breast, awaiting his fate. The boy, after speaking earnestly to his companion, who merely shook his head, stood up in the prow of the canoe, and casting one shuddering look at the dark column, he joined his hands above his head, and plunged into the sea. In a moment he came to the surface, and struck out vigorously towards us.

The canoe seemed already within the influence of the water-spout, and was drawn towards it with the violently agitated waters around its base. The Frenchman, unable longer to endure the awful sight bowed his head upon his hands; another moment, and he was lost to sight in the circle of mist and spray that enveloped the foot of the column; then a strong oscillation began to be visible in the body of the water-spout; it swayed heavily to and fro; the cloud at its apex seemed to stoop, and the whole mass broke and fell, with a noise that might have been heard for miles. The sea, far around, was crushed into smoothness by the shock; immediately where the vast pillar had stood, it boiled like a caldron; then a succession of waves, white with foam, came circling outward from the spot, extending even to us.

The native boy, who swam faster than we sailed, was already within forty or fifty yards of us, and we put about and steered for him: in a moment he was alongside, and Arthur, reaching out his hand, helped him into the boat.

The sea had now resumed its usual appearance, and every trace of the water-spout was gone, so that it was impossible to fix the spot where it had broken. Not a vestige of the canoe, or of her ill-fated company, was anywhere to be seen. We sailed backward and forward in the neighbourhood of the place, carefully scrutinising the surface in every direction, and traversing several times the spot, as nearly as we could determine it, where the canoe had last been seen: but our search was fruitless: the long billows swelled and subsided with their wonted regularity, and their rippled summits glittered as brightly in the sunshine as ever, but they revealed no trace of those whom they had so suddenly and remorselessly engulfed.

The water-spout which had first been seen, had disappeared, and a few heavy clouds in the zenith alone remained, as evidences of the terrific phenomenon which we had just witnessed.

Chapter Twelve.Our Island Home.The Illusion of the Golden Haze—The Wall of breakers—A Struggle for Life—The Islet of Palms.“Keel never ploughed that lonely sea,That isle no human eye hath viewed;Around it still in tumult rude,The surges everlastingly,Burst on the coral-girded shoreWith mighty bound and ceaseless roar;A fresh unsullied work of God,By human footstep yet untrod.”The native lad now seemed to be quite overwhelmed with grief. He had made no manifestations of it while we were endeavouring to discover some trace of his companions, but when at length we relinquished the attempt, and it became certain that they had all perished, he uttered a low, wailing cry, full of distress and anguish, and laying his head upon his hands, sobbed bitterly.The Frenchman had told us that the island lay to the northward; and we now put the head of the boat in that direction, steering by the sun, which was just setting.When the first violence of the boy’s grief had somewhat abated, Arthur spoke to him gently, in the dialect of the Society Islands. He listened attentively, turning his large eyes upon Arthur’s face with an expression of mingled timidity and interest and replied in a low, musical voice. They seemed to understand one another, and talked together for some time. The language spoken by the boy, differed so little, as Arthur told us, from that of the Tahitians, that he easily gathered the meaning of what he said. Upon being questioned as to the distance of the island, and the course which we must steer in order to reach it, he pointed to a bright star, just beginning to be visible in the north-east.It is customary with the South-sea Islanders, before setting out on their long voyages, in which it is necessary to venture out of sight of land, to select some star by which to regulate their course in the night-time; this they call the “aveia,” or guiding star of the voyage. They are thus enabled to sail from island to island, and from group to group, between which all intercourse would otherwise be impossible without a compass. The star now pointed out to us, had been fixed upon by the companions of the little islander, at the commencement of their ill-fated voyage, as marking the direction of the home which they were destined never to regain. Among other things, we learned from the boy, that his native island, which we were now endeavouring to reach, was the largest of a group of three, over all of which his father’s authority, as chief or king, extended: that there were six whites living among them, who had arrived there many years before, with the one who had just perished, and had come from an uninhabited island to the southward, upon which they had been wrecked.During the night the wind continued fair, and animated by the hopes to which the statements of the little native had given rise, we renewed our watch, which had lately been discontinued, and sailed steadily northward, cherishing a strong confidence that we should reach land before morning.The second watch—from a little after midnight to dawn—fell to me. As it began to grow light I almost feared to look northward, dreading the shock of a fresh disappointment, that must consign us again to the benumbing apathy from which we had yesterday rallied.There seemed to me to be something unusual in the atmosphere, that impeded, or rather confused and bewildered the sight; and when the sun rose, I had not made out anything like land. It was not mist or fog, for the air was dry, and there were already indications of a fiercely hot day, though it was yet fresh and cool. The sky above us, too, was perfectly clear, all the clouds seemed to have slid down to the horizon, along which a white army of them was marshalled, in rounded fleecy masses, like Alpine peaks towering one above another, or shining icebergs, pale and cold as those that drift in Arctic seas.One by one my companions awoke to learn the failure, thus far, of all the sanguine expectations of the preceding evening. The native boy could suggest no reason why we had not reached the island, and when questioned on the subject, and told that we had steered all through the night by the “aveia,” he merely shook his head with a bewildered and hopeless look. Max, on perceiving that we were still out of sight of land, threw himself down again in the bottom of the boat without speaking a word, where he remained with his eyes closed as if sleeping.Arthur, after some further conversation with the little islander, came to the conclusion that in steering due north, we had not made sufficient allowance for the strong current setting westward; and he proposed that we should now sail directly east, to which no objection was made, most of us having at last come to feel that it could matter little what course we thenceforth steered. He accordingly took the direction of things into his own hands: the wind, which had moderated, was still from the west, and he put the boat before it, and lashed the helm. The peculiar appearance of the atmosphere still continued. During the morning a number of tropic birds flew by us, the first that we had seen since our separation from the ship. About noon, two noddies alighted on the gaff, and the little native climbed the mast after them; but though they are generally so tame, or so stupid, as to permit themselves to be approached and taken with the hand, these flew away before he could seize them. We hailed the appearance of these birds as a favourable omen, neither species being often seen at any considerable distance from land. It was, I suppose, about an hour after this, that happening to look back, I saw what appeared to be a high island, covered with tall groves of palms, some two miles distant. The elevated shores, and the green tops of the trees, were plainly visible; but just at the point where land and water met, there was a kind of hazy indistinctness in the view. We were sailing directly from it, and I could not understand how we had passed as near as we must have done without observing it. Browne, catching sight of it almost at the same time with myself, uttered an exclamation that quickly aroused the attention of the rest, and we all stood for a moment gazing, half incredulously, upon the land which seemed to have started up so suddenly out of the sea, in the very track which we had just passed over.Arthur alone, appeared to be but little moved; he looked long and intently, without uttering a word.“This is singular—very singular!” said Morton. “It seems as though we must have sailed over theveryspot where it lies.”“Unless I am mistaken,” said Arthur, “we have been going backward for some time past: we must be in a very powerful current, which is carrying us in a direction contrary to that in which we are heading: the wind is so light that this is not impossible.”“I believe you are right,” said Morton, “I can account for it in no other way.”“We had better then pull down the sail, and take the benefit of the full force of the current,” resumed Arthur: this was accordingly done, and the mast unstepped.A short time passed, during which we appeared to be steadily drawing nearer to the land. The shore itself where it emerged from the ocean, we could not see with perfect distinctness: a fine, golden haze, like a visible atmosphere, waved and quivered before it, half veiling it from sight, and imparting to it an uncertain, though bright and dazzling aspect: but this appearance was confined to the lower part of the land; the bold shores and high groves were clearly defined.“I trust we are not the subjects of some fearful illusion,” said Browne, breaking a long silence, during which all eyes had been rivetted upon the island; “but there is something very strange about all this—it has an unearthly look.”As he spoke, the bright haze which floated over the sea near the surface, began to extend itself upward, and to grow denser and more impervious to the sight: the wooded shores became indistinct and dim, and seemed gradually receding in the distance, until the whole island, with its bold heights and waving groves, dissolved and melted away like a beautiful vision.“What is this?” exclaimed Browne, in a voice of horror. “I should think, if I believed such things permitted, that evil spirits had power here on the lonely sea, and were sporting with our misery.”“It is a mirage,” said Arthur quietly, “as I suspected from the first. But courage! though what we have seen was an optical illusion, there must be a real island in the distance beyond, of which this was the elevated and refracted image. It cannot, I think, be more than thirty or forty miles off, and the current is sweeping us steadily towards it.”“I suppose then,” said Morton, “that we can do nothing better, than to trust ourselves entirely to this current which must in fact be a pretty powerful one—at least as rapid as the Gulf Stream.”“We can do nothing better until the wind changes,” replied Arthur, cheerfully; “at present I am disposed to think we are doing very well, and fast approaching land.”But there was no change of the wind, and we continued hour after hour, apparently making no progress, but in reality, as we believed, drifting steadily westward. All through the day we maintained a vigilant watch, lest by any possibility we should miss sight of the island which Arthur was so confident we were approaching. Late in the afternoon we saw a flock of gannets, and some sooty tern; the gannets passing so near that we could hear the motion of their long twisted wings. Later still, a number of small reef-birds passed over head; all were flying westward. This confirmed Arthur in his belief of the proximity of land. “See,” said he, “these little reef-birds are bound in the same direction with the others, and with ourselves; you may depend upon it, that the sea-fowl we have seen, are hastening homeward to their nests, on some not far distant shore.”So fully did I share this confidence, that I commenced a calculation as to the time at which we might expect to reach land. Assuming it to have been thirty miles distant at the time when we had seen its spectrum, by means of the refraction, arising from a peculiar state of the atmosphere; and estimating the rate of the current at three miles an hour, I came to the conclusion that we could not even come in sight of it until late at night; and it was therefore without any strong feeling of disappointment, that I saw the day fast drawing to a close, and nothing but sky and ocean yet visible.The sun had already set, but the long tract of crimson and flame-coloured clouds that glowed in the horizon where he had disappeared, still reflected light enough to render it easy to distinguish objects in that quarter, when I was startled by a cry of joyful surprise from the native boy, who, shading his eyes with his hands, was looking intently westward. After a long and earnest gaze, he spoke eagerly to Arthur, who told us that the boy thought he saw his native island. Looking in the same direction, I could make out nothing. Arthur and Browne spoke of a brilliantly white line, narrow, but well-defined against the horizon, as being all that they could see. Morton, who was very keen-sighted, thought that he distinguished some dark object beyond the low white band seen by the others. As the light gradually failed, we lost sight of this appearance. It was some hours before the rising of the moon, which we awaited with anxiety. She was now at her full, and when at length she came up out of the sea, her disc, broad and red like a beamless sun, seemed to rest, dilated to preternatural size, upon the edge of the last wave that swelled against the horizon. As she ascended the sky, she shed over the ocean a flood of silvery light, less glaring, but almost as bright as that of day. The wonderful brilliancy of the moon and stars within the tropics, is one of the first things noted by the voyager. It may be owing to the great clearness and transparency of the atmosphere: but whatever the cause, their light is much more powerful than in higher latitudes, and they seem actually nearer, and of greater magnitude.We now looked eagerly westward again; the snow-white line, of which the others had spoken, was by this time distinctly visible to me also, and beyond it, too plainly relieved against the clear blue of the sky, to admit of doubt or illusion, were the high outlines of a tropical island, clothed with verdure to its summit.Again the little islander shouted joyously, and clasped his hands, while the tears streamed down his olive cheeks.He recognised his native island, the smallest and most easterly of the three, of which his father was the chief. We should soon come in sight of the remaining two, he said, which were lower, and lay to the north and south of it; he explained that the appearance, like a low white line running along the base of the island, was caused by the surf, bursting upon a coral reef about a mile from the shore.Here then, at last, was the land which we had at one time despaired of ever beholding again, and now we were well assured that it was no airy phantasm; yet strange as it may seem, our feelings were not those of unmingled joy.A thousand vague apprehensions and surmises of evil, began to suggest themselves, as we approached this unknown shore, inhabited by savages, and under the dominion of a savage. We doubted not that we might depend upon the good-will, and friendly offices of the little native, but we felt at the same time, that the influence of one so young, might prove insufficient for our protection.We were in some measure acquainted with the savage customs, the dark and cruel rites, that prevailed among the Polynesian races generally, and had often listened with horror, to the recital of what Arthur and his uncle had themselves seen, of their bloody superstitions, and abominable practices. As I looked into the faces of my companions, it was easy to perceive that they were possessed by anxious and gloomy thoughts.Meanwhile, the current continued to sweep us steadily onward toward the shore, the outlines of which became every moment more distinct. Occasionally a cloud drifted athwart the moon, and cast a soft shade upon the sea, obscuring the view for a time; but when it had passed, the land seemed to have drawn perceptibly nearer during the interval. At length, when the night was far advanced, and the island was right before us, at the distance of scarcely a mile, the native lad, who had been gazing wistfully toward it for the last half-hour, uttered a plaintive cry of disappointment. He had looked long and anxiously, for the appearance of the two remaining islands of his father’s group, but in vain; and now he yielded reluctantly to the conviction, that he had been deceived by the white line of surf, similar to that which bounded on one side his native island, and that he had never before seen the one which we were approaching. This discovery was a relief to me, and removed a weight of apprehension from my mind. The thought of being cast upon a desert and uninhabited shore, seemed less dreadful, than that of falling into the power of a tribe of savage islanders, even under circumstances which would probably secure us a friendly reception.But now a strange and unforeseen difficulty presented itself. Between us and the island, stretched a barrier reef, running north and south, and curving westward; and appearing, as far as we could see, completely to surround it. Along the whole line of this reef the sea was breaking with such violence as to render all approach dangerous; neither could we espy any break or opening in it, through which to reach the shore. Towards this foaming barrier the current was rapidly bearing us, and we were too feeble to struggle long against its force. To permit ourselves to be carried upon the reef would be certain destruction, and our only hope of safety seemed to lie in discovering some inlet through it. Our true situation flashed upon me all at once; I had not before thought of the impossibility of receding. Glancing at Arthur, I caught his eye, and saw that he comprehended the full extent of the danger. “We are near enough to see any break in the reef,” said he, “let us now take to the oars, and coast along it in search of one.”This was accordingly done. But it was not until we had pulled along the shore for some time, and found that in spite of our endeavours to preserve our distance from it, we were steadily forced nearer, that the rest seemed aware of the imminence of the danger.“The current is carrying us among the breakers,” exclaimed Morton, at length, “though we are heading rather away from the shore, we are getting closer every moment.” This appalling fact was now apparent to all.“The wind seems to have died away,” said Browne, “at any rate there is not enough of it to help us: we must put about and pull out of the reach of this surf, or we are lost.”“How long do you suppose we can continue that?” said Arthur. “No, our only hope is in finding an entrance through the reef, and that speedily.”We now steered a little farther away, and strained at the oars, as those who struggle for life. Occasionally, when lifted on the crest of a wave, we caught a transient glimpse of a smooth expanse of water beyond the foaming line of surf, and extending from the inner edge of the reef, to the shore of the island. The tall tops of the palms bordering the beach, seemed scarcely a stone’s throw distant and you could fancy that, but for the roar of the breakers, you might hear the rustling of their long, drooping leaves; but it only added to the horror of our situation, to see that safe and peaceful haven, so near, yet so inaccessible.In some places the reef rose quite out of the water; in others, it was, in nautical phrase, “all awash;” but nowhere could we attempt a landing with safety. All the while, too, it was evident that in spite of our desperate exertions, we were being driven nearer and nearer the breakers. This kind of work had continued almost an hour, when our strength began to fail.“There appears to be no use in this, comrades,” said Browne, at last; “had we not better just let her go upon the reef, and take our chance of being able to get to the shore?”“O, no!” exclaimed Arthur, earnestly, “that is too desperate.”“We shall be so completely exhausted that we shan’t be able to make an effort for our lives, when at last we are carried into the surf,” answered Browne, “and we must come to that sooner or later.”“I hope not—there is reason to hope not,” rejoined Arthur, “but if so, we may as well be exhausted, as fresh; no strength will be of any avail; we shall be crushed and mangled upon the rocks; or if by any possibility some of us should reach the shore, what is to become of our poor, sick Johnny?”“I will look after him,” said Browne, “I will pledge myself that he shan’t be lost, unless I am too.”“Let us hold out a few moments yet,” implored Arthur; “I will take your oar; you are the only one who has not been relieved.”“No,” said Browne, “you had better keep the helm; I can stand it a while longer, and I will pull until we are swept upon the reef; if you all think that the best plan.”It was barely possible that if we should now act as Browne proposed, we might be carried clear off the reef into the lagoon beyond, for we were opposite a sunken patch, upon which there was more water than at other places. Failing of this, the boat would inevitably be dashed to pieces; but still, if not bruised and disabled among the rocks, or carried back by the return waves, we might be able to reach the smooth water inside the reef, when it would be easy to swim ashore.But to most of us, the attempt seemed too desperate to be thought of, except as a last resort; and we preferred to toil at the oars as long as our strength should last in the hope of discovering an inlet. Arthur, on whose skill and judgment we all relied, steered still farther out, and for a while we seemed to make head against the swell and the current.For full half an hour longer, we kept up this severe struggle, that admitted not of an instant’s pause or respite. But then our progress became almost imperceptible, and every stroke was made more feebly and laboriously than the last. I could hardly hold the oar in my stiffened fingers. Still no break was to be seen in the long line of surf which seemed to hem in the island, extending like a white wall, of uniform height, far as the eye could reach, on either hand. I had read of islands, like that of Eimeo, completely encircled by coral reefs, with but a single gateway by which they were accessible. What if this were such an one, and the only entrance, miles from the spot where we were toiling for our lives! The conviction that we must risk the chance of success in an attempt to land upon some ledge of the reef, was forcing itself upon all our minds, when Max, trembling with eagerness, pointed to what appeared to be an opening through the surf, nearly opposite us; there was a narrow space where the long waves, as they rolled towards the shore, did not seem to encounter the obstacle over which they broke with such violence on both sides of it, and the swell of the ocean met the placid waters of the lagoon, without any intervening barrier. Through this gap, the shore of the island could be seen, down to the water’s edge.Arthur hastily made a bundle of the mast and gaff, and placing it within Johnny’s reach, told him to cling to it, in case of accident. Then, calling upon us to pull steadily, he steered directly for the inlet. As we neared it the noise of the surf became almost deafening: the huge rollers, as they thundered against the perpendicular wall of coral, rising abruptly from the depths of the sea, sent up a column of foam and spray, twelve or fifteen feet into the air. When just within the entrance, the spectacle was grand and appalling. But the danger, real or apparent, was soon over: with a firm hand, and steady eye, Arthur guided the boat along the centre of the narrow pass, and in a moment we had glided from the scene of fierce commotion without the reef, into one of perfect tranquillity and repose. A dozen strokes seemed to have placed us in a new world. Involuntarily we rested on our oars, and gazed around us in silence.From the inner edge of the reef, to the broad white beach of the island, a space of perhaps half a mile, spread the clear expanse of the lagoon, smooth and unruffled as the surface of an inland lake. Half-way between the reef and the shore, were two fairy islets, the one scarcely a foot above the water, and covered with a green mantle of low shrubs; the other, larger and higher, and adorned by a group of graceful young cocoa-nuts.The island itself was higher, and bolder in its outlines than is usual with those of coral formation, which are generally very low, and without any diversity of surface. Dense groves clothed that portion of it opposite to us, nearly to the beach, giving it at that hour, a somewhat gloomy and forbidding aspect.As we surveyed this lovely, but silent and desolate landscape, the doubts and apprehensions which we had before experienced began once more to suggest themselves; but they were dissipated by the cheerful voice of Arthur, calling upon us to pull for the shore. He steered for the larger of the two islets, and when, as the boat grated upon the coral tops beside it, we threw down the oars, the strength which had hitherto sustained us, seemed suddenly to fail, and we could scarcely crawl ashore. The last scene of effort and danger, had taxed our powers to the uttermost, and now they gave way. I was so feeble, that I could hardly avoid sinking helplessly upon the sand. With one impulse we kneeled down and returned thanks to Him Who had preserved us through all the strange vicissitudes of the last few days. We next began to look round in search of such means of refreshment as the spot might afford.The cocoa-palms upon the islet, though far from having attained their full growth, (few of them exceeding twelve feet in height), bore abundantly, and we easily procured as much of the fruit as we needed. Tearing off the outer husk, and punching a hole through the shell, which in the young nut is so soft that this can be done with the finger, we drank off the refreshing liquor with which it is filled; then breaking it open, the half-formed, jelly-like kernel, furnished a species of food most nutritious and agreeable, and probably the best adapted to our half-famished condition.Hunger and thirst being appeased, our next care was to make some arrangement for passing the night more comfortably than could be done in the boat. Selecting a clear space in the centre of the group of young cocoa-nuts, we proceeded to make a rude tent, by fixing two of the oars upright in the ground,—tying the mast across their tops and throwing the sail over it, the ends being then fastened to the ground at a convenient distance on each side.Finding that the bare ground would make a rather hard couch, though far less so than we had lately been accustomed to, Morton proposed that we should bring a load of leaves from the neighbouring shore to spread upon it. He and I accordingly rowed over to the mainland, and collected in the grove near the beech, a boatload of the clean dry foliage of the pandanus and hibiscus, which made excellent elastic beds. Johnny watched our departure as though he considered this an exceedingly rash and adventurous enterprise, and he seemed greatly relieved at our safe return. It was now past midnight, and after hauling the boat well up on the shore, we laid down side by side and were very soon asleep.

“Keel never ploughed that lonely sea,That isle no human eye hath viewed;Around it still in tumult rude,The surges everlastingly,Burst on the coral-girded shoreWith mighty bound and ceaseless roar;A fresh unsullied work of God,By human footstep yet untrod.”

“Keel never ploughed that lonely sea,That isle no human eye hath viewed;Around it still in tumult rude,The surges everlastingly,Burst on the coral-girded shoreWith mighty bound and ceaseless roar;A fresh unsullied work of God,By human footstep yet untrod.”

The native lad now seemed to be quite overwhelmed with grief. He had made no manifestations of it while we were endeavouring to discover some trace of his companions, but when at length we relinquished the attempt, and it became certain that they had all perished, he uttered a low, wailing cry, full of distress and anguish, and laying his head upon his hands, sobbed bitterly.

The Frenchman had told us that the island lay to the northward; and we now put the head of the boat in that direction, steering by the sun, which was just setting.

When the first violence of the boy’s grief had somewhat abated, Arthur spoke to him gently, in the dialect of the Society Islands. He listened attentively, turning his large eyes upon Arthur’s face with an expression of mingled timidity and interest and replied in a low, musical voice. They seemed to understand one another, and talked together for some time. The language spoken by the boy, differed so little, as Arthur told us, from that of the Tahitians, that he easily gathered the meaning of what he said. Upon being questioned as to the distance of the island, and the course which we must steer in order to reach it, he pointed to a bright star, just beginning to be visible in the north-east.

It is customary with the South-sea Islanders, before setting out on their long voyages, in which it is necessary to venture out of sight of land, to select some star by which to regulate their course in the night-time; this they call the “aveia,” or guiding star of the voyage. They are thus enabled to sail from island to island, and from group to group, between which all intercourse would otherwise be impossible without a compass. The star now pointed out to us, had been fixed upon by the companions of the little islander, at the commencement of their ill-fated voyage, as marking the direction of the home which they were destined never to regain. Among other things, we learned from the boy, that his native island, which we were now endeavouring to reach, was the largest of a group of three, over all of which his father’s authority, as chief or king, extended: that there were six whites living among them, who had arrived there many years before, with the one who had just perished, and had come from an uninhabited island to the southward, upon which they had been wrecked.

During the night the wind continued fair, and animated by the hopes to which the statements of the little native had given rise, we renewed our watch, which had lately been discontinued, and sailed steadily northward, cherishing a strong confidence that we should reach land before morning.

The second watch—from a little after midnight to dawn—fell to me. As it began to grow light I almost feared to look northward, dreading the shock of a fresh disappointment, that must consign us again to the benumbing apathy from which we had yesterday rallied.

There seemed to me to be something unusual in the atmosphere, that impeded, or rather confused and bewildered the sight; and when the sun rose, I had not made out anything like land. It was not mist or fog, for the air was dry, and there were already indications of a fiercely hot day, though it was yet fresh and cool. The sky above us, too, was perfectly clear, all the clouds seemed to have slid down to the horizon, along which a white army of them was marshalled, in rounded fleecy masses, like Alpine peaks towering one above another, or shining icebergs, pale and cold as those that drift in Arctic seas.

One by one my companions awoke to learn the failure, thus far, of all the sanguine expectations of the preceding evening. The native boy could suggest no reason why we had not reached the island, and when questioned on the subject, and told that we had steered all through the night by the “aveia,” he merely shook his head with a bewildered and hopeless look. Max, on perceiving that we were still out of sight of land, threw himself down again in the bottom of the boat without speaking a word, where he remained with his eyes closed as if sleeping.

Arthur, after some further conversation with the little islander, came to the conclusion that in steering due north, we had not made sufficient allowance for the strong current setting westward; and he proposed that we should now sail directly east, to which no objection was made, most of us having at last come to feel that it could matter little what course we thenceforth steered. He accordingly took the direction of things into his own hands: the wind, which had moderated, was still from the west, and he put the boat before it, and lashed the helm. The peculiar appearance of the atmosphere still continued. During the morning a number of tropic birds flew by us, the first that we had seen since our separation from the ship. About noon, two noddies alighted on the gaff, and the little native climbed the mast after them; but though they are generally so tame, or so stupid, as to permit themselves to be approached and taken with the hand, these flew away before he could seize them. We hailed the appearance of these birds as a favourable omen, neither species being often seen at any considerable distance from land. It was, I suppose, about an hour after this, that happening to look back, I saw what appeared to be a high island, covered with tall groves of palms, some two miles distant. The elevated shores, and the green tops of the trees, were plainly visible; but just at the point where land and water met, there was a kind of hazy indistinctness in the view. We were sailing directly from it, and I could not understand how we had passed as near as we must have done without observing it. Browne, catching sight of it almost at the same time with myself, uttered an exclamation that quickly aroused the attention of the rest, and we all stood for a moment gazing, half incredulously, upon the land which seemed to have started up so suddenly out of the sea, in the very track which we had just passed over.

Arthur alone, appeared to be but little moved; he looked long and intently, without uttering a word.

“This is singular—very singular!” said Morton. “It seems as though we must have sailed over theveryspot where it lies.”

“Unless I am mistaken,” said Arthur, “we have been going backward for some time past: we must be in a very powerful current, which is carrying us in a direction contrary to that in which we are heading: the wind is so light that this is not impossible.”

“I believe you are right,” said Morton, “I can account for it in no other way.”

“We had better then pull down the sail, and take the benefit of the full force of the current,” resumed Arthur: this was accordingly done, and the mast unstepped.

A short time passed, during which we appeared to be steadily drawing nearer to the land. The shore itself where it emerged from the ocean, we could not see with perfect distinctness: a fine, golden haze, like a visible atmosphere, waved and quivered before it, half veiling it from sight, and imparting to it an uncertain, though bright and dazzling aspect: but this appearance was confined to the lower part of the land; the bold shores and high groves were clearly defined.

“I trust we are not the subjects of some fearful illusion,” said Browne, breaking a long silence, during which all eyes had been rivetted upon the island; “but there is something very strange about all this—it has an unearthly look.”

As he spoke, the bright haze which floated over the sea near the surface, began to extend itself upward, and to grow denser and more impervious to the sight: the wooded shores became indistinct and dim, and seemed gradually receding in the distance, until the whole island, with its bold heights and waving groves, dissolved and melted away like a beautiful vision.

“What is this?” exclaimed Browne, in a voice of horror. “I should think, if I believed such things permitted, that evil spirits had power here on the lonely sea, and were sporting with our misery.”

“It is a mirage,” said Arthur quietly, “as I suspected from the first. But courage! though what we have seen was an optical illusion, there must be a real island in the distance beyond, of which this was the elevated and refracted image. It cannot, I think, be more than thirty or forty miles off, and the current is sweeping us steadily towards it.”

“I suppose then,” said Morton, “that we can do nothing better, than to trust ourselves entirely to this current which must in fact be a pretty powerful one—at least as rapid as the Gulf Stream.”

“We can do nothing better until the wind changes,” replied Arthur, cheerfully; “at present I am disposed to think we are doing very well, and fast approaching land.”

But there was no change of the wind, and we continued hour after hour, apparently making no progress, but in reality, as we believed, drifting steadily westward. All through the day we maintained a vigilant watch, lest by any possibility we should miss sight of the island which Arthur was so confident we were approaching. Late in the afternoon we saw a flock of gannets, and some sooty tern; the gannets passing so near that we could hear the motion of their long twisted wings. Later still, a number of small reef-birds passed over head; all were flying westward. This confirmed Arthur in his belief of the proximity of land. “See,” said he, “these little reef-birds are bound in the same direction with the others, and with ourselves; you may depend upon it, that the sea-fowl we have seen, are hastening homeward to their nests, on some not far distant shore.”

So fully did I share this confidence, that I commenced a calculation as to the time at which we might expect to reach land. Assuming it to have been thirty miles distant at the time when we had seen its spectrum, by means of the refraction, arising from a peculiar state of the atmosphere; and estimating the rate of the current at three miles an hour, I came to the conclusion that we could not even come in sight of it until late at night; and it was therefore without any strong feeling of disappointment, that I saw the day fast drawing to a close, and nothing but sky and ocean yet visible.

The sun had already set, but the long tract of crimson and flame-coloured clouds that glowed in the horizon where he had disappeared, still reflected light enough to render it easy to distinguish objects in that quarter, when I was startled by a cry of joyful surprise from the native boy, who, shading his eyes with his hands, was looking intently westward. After a long and earnest gaze, he spoke eagerly to Arthur, who told us that the boy thought he saw his native island. Looking in the same direction, I could make out nothing. Arthur and Browne spoke of a brilliantly white line, narrow, but well-defined against the horizon, as being all that they could see. Morton, who was very keen-sighted, thought that he distinguished some dark object beyond the low white band seen by the others. As the light gradually failed, we lost sight of this appearance. It was some hours before the rising of the moon, which we awaited with anxiety. She was now at her full, and when at length she came up out of the sea, her disc, broad and red like a beamless sun, seemed to rest, dilated to preternatural size, upon the edge of the last wave that swelled against the horizon. As she ascended the sky, she shed over the ocean a flood of silvery light, less glaring, but almost as bright as that of day. The wonderful brilliancy of the moon and stars within the tropics, is one of the first things noted by the voyager. It may be owing to the great clearness and transparency of the atmosphere: but whatever the cause, their light is much more powerful than in higher latitudes, and they seem actually nearer, and of greater magnitude.

We now looked eagerly westward again; the snow-white line, of which the others had spoken, was by this time distinctly visible to me also, and beyond it, too plainly relieved against the clear blue of the sky, to admit of doubt or illusion, were the high outlines of a tropical island, clothed with verdure to its summit.

Again the little islander shouted joyously, and clasped his hands, while the tears streamed down his olive cheeks.

He recognised his native island, the smallest and most easterly of the three, of which his father was the chief. We should soon come in sight of the remaining two, he said, which were lower, and lay to the north and south of it; he explained that the appearance, like a low white line running along the base of the island, was caused by the surf, bursting upon a coral reef about a mile from the shore.

Here then, at last, was the land which we had at one time despaired of ever beholding again, and now we were well assured that it was no airy phantasm; yet strange as it may seem, our feelings were not those of unmingled joy.

A thousand vague apprehensions and surmises of evil, began to suggest themselves, as we approached this unknown shore, inhabited by savages, and under the dominion of a savage. We doubted not that we might depend upon the good-will, and friendly offices of the little native, but we felt at the same time, that the influence of one so young, might prove insufficient for our protection.

We were in some measure acquainted with the savage customs, the dark and cruel rites, that prevailed among the Polynesian races generally, and had often listened with horror, to the recital of what Arthur and his uncle had themselves seen, of their bloody superstitions, and abominable practices. As I looked into the faces of my companions, it was easy to perceive that they were possessed by anxious and gloomy thoughts.

Meanwhile, the current continued to sweep us steadily onward toward the shore, the outlines of which became every moment more distinct. Occasionally a cloud drifted athwart the moon, and cast a soft shade upon the sea, obscuring the view for a time; but when it had passed, the land seemed to have drawn perceptibly nearer during the interval. At length, when the night was far advanced, and the island was right before us, at the distance of scarcely a mile, the native lad, who had been gazing wistfully toward it for the last half-hour, uttered a plaintive cry of disappointment. He had looked long and anxiously, for the appearance of the two remaining islands of his father’s group, but in vain; and now he yielded reluctantly to the conviction, that he had been deceived by the white line of surf, similar to that which bounded on one side his native island, and that he had never before seen the one which we were approaching. This discovery was a relief to me, and removed a weight of apprehension from my mind. The thought of being cast upon a desert and uninhabited shore, seemed less dreadful, than that of falling into the power of a tribe of savage islanders, even under circumstances which would probably secure us a friendly reception.

But now a strange and unforeseen difficulty presented itself. Between us and the island, stretched a barrier reef, running north and south, and curving westward; and appearing, as far as we could see, completely to surround it. Along the whole line of this reef the sea was breaking with such violence as to render all approach dangerous; neither could we espy any break or opening in it, through which to reach the shore. Towards this foaming barrier the current was rapidly bearing us, and we were too feeble to struggle long against its force. To permit ourselves to be carried upon the reef would be certain destruction, and our only hope of safety seemed to lie in discovering some inlet through it. Our true situation flashed upon me all at once; I had not before thought of the impossibility of receding. Glancing at Arthur, I caught his eye, and saw that he comprehended the full extent of the danger. “We are near enough to see any break in the reef,” said he, “let us now take to the oars, and coast along it in search of one.”

This was accordingly done. But it was not until we had pulled along the shore for some time, and found that in spite of our endeavours to preserve our distance from it, we were steadily forced nearer, that the rest seemed aware of the imminence of the danger.

“The current is carrying us among the breakers,” exclaimed Morton, at length, “though we are heading rather away from the shore, we are getting closer every moment.” This appalling fact was now apparent to all.

“The wind seems to have died away,” said Browne, “at any rate there is not enough of it to help us: we must put about and pull out of the reach of this surf, or we are lost.”

“How long do you suppose we can continue that?” said Arthur. “No, our only hope is in finding an entrance through the reef, and that speedily.”

We now steered a little farther away, and strained at the oars, as those who struggle for life. Occasionally, when lifted on the crest of a wave, we caught a transient glimpse of a smooth expanse of water beyond the foaming line of surf, and extending from the inner edge of the reef, to the shore of the island. The tall tops of the palms bordering the beach, seemed scarcely a stone’s throw distant and you could fancy that, but for the roar of the breakers, you might hear the rustling of their long, drooping leaves; but it only added to the horror of our situation, to see that safe and peaceful haven, so near, yet so inaccessible.

In some places the reef rose quite out of the water; in others, it was, in nautical phrase, “all awash;” but nowhere could we attempt a landing with safety. All the while, too, it was evident that in spite of our desperate exertions, we were being driven nearer and nearer the breakers. This kind of work had continued almost an hour, when our strength began to fail.

“There appears to be no use in this, comrades,” said Browne, at last; “had we not better just let her go upon the reef, and take our chance of being able to get to the shore?”

“O, no!” exclaimed Arthur, earnestly, “that is too desperate.”

“We shall be so completely exhausted that we shan’t be able to make an effort for our lives, when at last we are carried into the surf,” answered Browne, “and we must come to that sooner or later.”

“I hope not—there is reason to hope not,” rejoined Arthur, “but if so, we may as well be exhausted, as fresh; no strength will be of any avail; we shall be crushed and mangled upon the rocks; or if by any possibility some of us should reach the shore, what is to become of our poor, sick Johnny?”

“I will look after him,” said Browne, “I will pledge myself that he shan’t be lost, unless I am too.”

“Let us hold out a few moments yet,” implored Arthur; “I will take your oar; you are the only one who has not been relieved.”

“No,” said Browne, “you had better keep the helm; I can stand it a while longer, and I will pull until we are swept upon the reef; if you all think that the best plan.”

It was barely possible that if we should now act as Browne proposed, we might be carried clear off the reef into the lagoon beyond, for we were opposite a sunken patch, upon which there was more water than at other places. Failing of this, the boat would inevitably be dashed to pieces; but still, if not bruised and disabled among the rocks, or carried back by the return waves, we might be able to reach the smooth water inside the reef, when it would be easy to swim ashore.

But to most of us, the attempt seemed too desperate to be thought of, except as a last resort; and we preferred to toil at the oars as long as our strength should last in the hope of discovering an inlet. Arthur, on whose skill and judgment we all relied, steered still farther out, and for a while we seemed to make head against the swell and the current.

For full half an hour longer, we kept up this severe struggle, that admitted not of an instant’s pause or respite. But then our progress became almost imperceptible, and every stroke was made more feebly and laboriously than the last. I could hardly hold the oar in my stiffened fingers. Still no break was to be seen in the long line of surf which seemed to hem in the island, extending like a white wall, of uniform height, far as the eye could reach, on either hand. I had read of islands, like that of Eimeo, completely encircled by coral reefs, with but a single gateway by which they were accessible. What if this were such an one, and the only entrance, miles from the spot where we were toiling for our lives! The conviction that we must risk the chance of success in an attempt to land upon some ledge of the reef, was forcing itself upon all our minds, when Max, trembling with eagerness, pointed to what appeared to be an opening through the surf, nearly opposite us; there was a narrow space where the long waves, as they rolled towards the shore, did not seem to encounter the obstacle over which they broke with such violence on both sides of it, and the swell of the ocean met the placid waters of the lagoon, without any intervening barrier. Through this gap, the shore of the island could be seen, down to the water’s edge.

Arthur hastily made a bundle of the mast and gaff, and placing it within Johnny’s reach, told him to cling to it, in case of accident. Then, calling upon us to pull steadily, he steered directly for the inlet. As we neared it the noise of the surf became almost deafening: the huge rollers, as they thundered against the perpendicular wall of coral, rising abruptly from the depths of the sea, sent up a column of foam and spray, twelve or fifteen feet into the air. When just within the entrance, the spectacle was grand and appalling. But the danger, real or apparent, was soon over: with a firm hand, and steady eye, Arthur guided the boat along the centre of the narrow pass, and in a moment we had glided from the scene of fierce commotion without the reef, into one of perfect tranquillity and repose. A dozen strokes seemed to have placed us in a new world. Involuntarily we rested on our oars, and gazed around us in silence.

From the inner edge of the reef, to the broad white beach of the island, a space of perhaps half a mile, spread the clear expanse of the lagoon, smooth and unruffled as the surface of an inland lake. Half-way between the reef and the shore, were two fairy islets, the one scarcely a foot above the water, and covered with a green mantle of low shrubs; the other, larger and higher, and adorned by a group of graceful young cocoa-nuts.

The island itself was higher, and bolder in its outlines than is usual with those of coral formation, which are generally very low, and without any diversity of surface. Dense groves clothed that portion of it opposite to us, nearly to the beach, giving it at that hour, a somewhat gloomy and forbidding aspect.

As we surveyed this lovely, but silent and desolate landscape, the doubts and apprehensions which we had before experienced began once more to suggest themselves; but they were dissipated by the cheerful voice of Arthur, calling upon us to pull for the shore. He steered for the larger of the two islets, and when, as the boat grated upon the coral tops beside it, we threw down the oars, the strength which had hitherto sustained us, seemed suddenly to fail, and we could scarcely crawl ashore. The last scene of effort and danger, had taxed our powers to the uttermost, and now they gave way. I was so feeble, that I could hardly avoid sinking helplessly upon the sand. With one impulse we kneeled down and returned thanks to Him Who had preserved us through all the strange vicissitudes of the last few days. We next began to look round in search of such means of refreshment as the spot might afford.

The cocoa-palms upon the islet, though far from having attained their full growth, (few of them exceeding twelve feet in height), bore abundantly, and we easily procured as much of the fruit as we needed. Tearing off the outer husk, and punching a hole through the shell, which in the young nut is so soft that this can be done with the finger, we drank off the refreshing liquor with which it is filled; then breaking it open, the half-formed, jelly-like kernel, furnished a species of food most nutritious and agreeable, and probably the best adapted to our half-famished condition.

Hunger and thirst being appeased, our next care was to make some arrangement for passing the night more comfortably than could be done in the boat. Selecting a clear space in the centre of the group of young cocoa-nuts, we proceeded to make a rude tent, by fixing two of the oars upright in the ground,—tying the mast across their tops and throwing the sail over it, the ends being then fastened to the ground at a convenient distance on each side.

Finding that the bare ground would make a rather hard couch, though far less so than we had lately been accustomed to, Morton proposed that we should bring a load of leaves from the neighbouring shore to spread upon it. He and I accordingly rowed over to the mainland, and collected in the grove near the beech, a boatload of the clean dry foliage of the pandanus and hibiscus, which made excellent elastic beds. Johnny watched our departure as though he considered this an exceedingly rash and adventurous enterprise, and he seemed greatly relieved at our safe return. It was now past midnight, and after hauling the boat well up on the shore, we laid down side by side and were very soon asleep.

Chapter Thirteen.The Exploring Expedition.Eiulo—Pearl-Shell Beach—A Warlike Colony—An Invasion Repelled.“They linger there while weeks and months go by,And hold their hope, tho’ weeks and months are past;And still at morning round the farthest sky,And still at eve, their eager glance is cast,If there they may behold the far-off mastArise, for which they have not ceased to pray.”For a number of days we remained upon the islet where we had first landed, seldom visiting even the adjacent shore. During this time we subsisted upon cocoa-nuts and a small species of shell-fish, resembling mussels, which we obtained in abundance from the ledges of the neighbouring reef, and which the little native told us, were used as a common article of food among his own people. We had reason to feel grateful that, while we were as feeble and incapable of exertion as we found ourselves for some days, food could be so readily procured. It was also fortunate that during this period the weather continued remarkably fine and mild, with no perceptible variations of temperature; for I have little doubt that in the reduced and exhausted condition in which we then were, and being without any effectual shelter, two or three days of bad weather would have cost some of us our lives. The nights were dry and mild, and no dew seemed to fall upon the islet: thanks to this genial weather, and to abundance of nourishing food, we began rapidly to recover strength.Some time passed before we thought of making any attempt to penetrate or explore the island. We were, naturally, very reluctant to admit even to ourselves, the probability that our stay upon it was to be of any long duration; and we did not therefore feel as much interest in its character and resources as we should otherwise have done. All our thoughts and hopes ran in one channel. We looked for the coming of a ship to rescue us from our dreary position; and every morning and evening, at least, and generally many times a day, some one of us climbed into the tuft of an inclining palm, to take a careful survey of that portion of the ocean, which could be seen from our side of the island. The thought of acting in any respect as though the lonely spot where we now found ourselves was destined to be our permanent abode, was in fact too painful and repugnant to our feelings to be willingly entertained; we were content therefore, to provide for our daily wants as they arose, without anticipating or preparing for the future.A few days passed in this unvaried and monotonous routine, seemed in reality a long period; recent occurrences began to assume the vagueness of things that had happened years ago. I remember particularly, that, in looking back at the dreadful scenes of the mutiny, and our subsequent sufferings at sea, the whole seemed unreal, and more like a horrible dream, than an actual part of our past experience.We soon found that this inert and aimless mode of living—this state of passive expectation, while awaiting the occurrence of an event which we could do nothing to procure or hasten, was a most miserable one: though our physical strength was in a great measure recruited, there was no increase of cheerfulness. Except when engaged in procuring food, or making our daily surveys of the ocean, (which was all our occupation), we were dispirited and listless.Arthur perceived the evil of this state of things, and set himself to devising a remedy.We had been at the island about two weeks, when he proposed, one morning, that we should go over to the mainland and commence a search for water, making an excursion a little way into the interior, if it should prove necessary.Max objected to this, saying that we had no need of water, since we could, without doubt, obtain cocoa-nut milk as long as we should be obliged to remain upon the island, and that by going into the interior, out of sight of the ocean, we might lose an opportunity of being rescued.To this, Arthur replied, that the exclusive use of cocoa-nut milk was considered very unwholesome, and was supposed to be the cause of certain dropsical complaints, common among the natives of many of the Pacific islands; that beside; it was by no means certain that a supply of it could be obtained throughout the year. He finally suggested the possibility that our stay on the island might be longer than we anticipated, in which case its resources, and the means of subsistence which it afforded, would be matters of great interest to us. In regard to the danger which Max seemed chiefly to fear, he said that we should seldom altogether lose sight of the ocean, but might, on the contrary, obtain a wider view of it from other parts of the island. I warmly seconded Arthur’s proposal, for I perceived the probable beneficial effects of effort, or occupation, of almost any kind. Morton also was decidedly in favour of it; and Johnny, who had recovered strength and spirits wonderfully within the last few days, was quite enthusiastic for the excursion. He calculated confidently upon our discovering a creek of fresh water, full of fishes and lobsters, and cited the history of the Swiss family Robinson, in support of the reasonableness of these expectations; declaring that for us part, he could not see why we might not count upon equal good fortune with them. Browne seemed indifferent about the matter. The little native, (whose name, upon Arthur’s authority, I shall write “Eiulo,” though “Iooloo,” comes nearer to the sound, as he himself pronounced it), shared in Johnny’s delight in prospect of the expedition; indeed, the two had already become the best friends in the world, notwithstanding the difficulty of communicating with one another, and seemed to harmonise in every thing. The excursion was accordingly determined upon, and this being so, there was nothing to prevent our setting out at once.Morton proposed that, instead of undertaking to penetrate into the interior, we should keep along the shore to the northward, as by that means some idea might be gained of the extent of the island; and since any considerable spring or stream must find its way to the sea, we should also be more likely to discover water, than by pursuing the other course. Along the southern shore, the land was lower and less uneven than in the opposite direction, and held forth a slighter prospect of springs or streams. The difficulty of holding a straight course through the forest, where we should be without any means of ascertaining the points of the compass, was a consideration of great weight, and Morton’s plan was at last adopted, as being upon the whole the best.The sun was not more than half an hour high, when we pushed off from the shore of the islet, and rowed over towards the mainland. The morning was fine and clear, and either the fresh, bracing sea-air, or the stir and excitement of setting out upon our expedition, had an exhilarating influence, for we gradually became quite cheerful, and even animated; and the faces of my companions began to brighten up with more of the old familiar expression, than I had seen there for many a day.The merest breath of a breeze just stirred the crisp leaves of the palms upon the neighbouring shore; the tiny wavelets rippled softly upon the snowy, shell-spangled beach, or, out in the lagoon, danced and sparkled in the sunlight; still further out and just beyond the barrier that fenced in this quiet and secluded scene from the open ocean, we could see the huge blue rollers with their foaming crests surging high into the air; and the heavy booming of the surf, as it thundered upon the reef, might be heard for miles around, amid the prevailing silence. Beyond this again, stretched away to the horizon, the blue, swelling arch of the ocean—a clear, deep, intense blue, contrasting beautifully with the paler blue of the sky, against which it was relieved, and with the emerald expanse of the lagoon.Browne gazed about him with more interest than I had yet seen him manifest in any thing since we had reached the island. He inhaled the fresh morning air with the appearance of actual relish and enjoyment and at last, to my surprise, (for Max had accused him, not without some reason, of having been the most lugubrious of our party), he began to sing to a brisk and cheerful tune—“O, happy days of hope and restShall dawn on sorrow’s dreary night,Though grief may be an evening guest,Yet joy shall come with morning light!The light of smiles shall beam again,From lids that now o’erflow with tears,And weary hours of woe and pain,Are earnests of serener years.”“Well,” said he, as he finished his song, “this may be a desert island, but I will defy any one to gainsay that the morning is delicious, and the scene a right lovely one.”“I am glad you begin to wake up to it,” said Morton, “it looks very much as it has at this hour for ten days past.”“No, no,” protested Browne, “this bright, clear atmosphere makes a very great difference in the appearance of things: we have had no such mornings as this.”“I wish you could manage to enjoy it,” said Max, “without missing every other stroke, and digging me so unmercifully in the back with your oar-handle; if you can’t, I must ask you to change seats with me, and let me take the bow-oar.”“How natural and refreshing that sounds!” cried Morton, laughing; “it is a sure token that prospects are brightening, and serious dangers are over, when we find ourselves again in a condition to scold about trifles.”“It isn’t such a trifle, to be thumped and mauled with the butt of an oar, as I have been all the while Browne was singing, and rhapsodising, and going into ecstasies about the beauty of the morning; which is just such another as we have had ever since we have been here; all the difference being in his feelings, which happen to be a shade or two less doleful than usual, and so cause things to look brighter.”“Perhaps you would have me believe,” answered Browne, “that the sun will invariably shine when I chance to be in good spirits, and that a thunder-storm would be the natural consequence of my having a fit of the blues?”“I should be sorry if that were the case,” replied Max, “as we should then be sure to have a large average of bad weather.”“This excursion reminds me of our school-days,” said Arthur; “it almost seems as though we were once more starting off together, on one of our Saturday rambles, as we have so often done on fine summer and autumn mornings at home.”“I think I shall never forget those forays through the woods,” said Morton, “over hill and hollow, in search of nuts, or berries, or wild-grapes, or meadow-plums—the fishing and swimming in summer, the snow-balling, and sledding, and skating, in winter! an innocent and happy set of urchins we were then!”“Really,” said Max, laughing, “to hear you one would suppose that we were now a conclave of venerable, grey-haired sages, scarcely able to remember the time when we were children, and so full of wisdom and experience, that we had long ago ceased to be ‘innocent and happy.’”“Without professing to be so wise or experienced, as to be very unhappy on that account,” returned Morton, “I suppose I may say that I am old enough, and sufficiently changed since those days, to feel, as I now look back upon them with a sigh, their peculiar happiness, so unlike any thing that after-life affords.”“How singular it is,” said Browne, “that you four who were playmates when children, should have happened to keep together so long.”“And still find ourselves together on an island in the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from home,” added Arthur.“After quitting school,” continued Browne, “I never met with any of my comrades there. Of all the mates with whom I used on the Saturday half-holydays, to go gathering hips and haws, or angling in the Clyde, I have not since come in contact with one.”“It don’t seem at all like Saturday to me,” said Johnny, who for some minutes past had appeared to have something on his mind, as to the expediency of communicating which he was undecided; “I was afraid that it was Sunday, every thing is so still; but I hope it is not, for Arthur would not think it right to start upon an exploring expedition on Sunday, and so it would be put off.”“Truly,” said Browne, “that is extremely flattering to the rest of us. Do you think we are all heathens, except Arthur? I, for one, have no notion of becoming a savage, because I am on a desert island; I shall go for maintaining the decencies of Christianity and civilisation.”“Does any one know what day it really is?” inquired Morton.Max said he believed it was Monday. Arthur thought it was Wednesday, and added that he had memoranda, from which he had no doubt he could fix the day with certainty.“It was on Friday,” said Max, “that the mutiny took place, and that we got to sea in the boat.”“Yes,” said Arthur, “and it was on Wednesday night, I think, five days afterwards, that we landed here.”“Five days!” cried Max. “Do you mean to say that we were but five days at sea before reaching the island?”“I think that is all,” replied Arthur, “though the time certainly seems much longer. Then, if my calculations are correct, we have been here just two weeks to-day, so that this is Wednesday. But,” continued he, “as our heavenly Father has thus guided our little bark safe through this wilderness of waters, let us celebrate the day of our landing on this ‘Canaan,’ by making it our first Sabbath, and our grateful voices shall every seventh day, from this, be lifted up in praise and thanksgiving for the mercy thus vouchsafed to us.”While this conversation was going on, we reached the shore. Johnny scrambled eagerly to the bow, anxious to be the first to land, and he attained this object of his ambition, by jumping into the water nearly up to his waist, before the boat was fairly beached. Then, after gazing around him a moment with exclamations of wonder and admiration, he suddenly commenced running up and down the wide, firm beach, gathering shells, with as much zeal and earnestness, as though he was spending a holiday by the sea-side at home, and could tie up these pretty curiosities in his handkerchief, and run back with them in five minutes to his father’s house. There was certainly some ground for Johnny’s admiration; just at the spot where we had landed, the shore was thickly strewn, in a manner which I had never before seen equalled, with varieties of the most curious and beautiful shells. They were of all sizes, and of every conceivable shape and colour. The surfaces of some were smooth and highly polished; others were scolloped, or fluted, or marked with wave-like undulations. There were little rice and cowrie shells; mottled tiger shells; spider shells, with their long, sharp spikes; immense conches, rough, and covered with great knobs on the outside, but smooth and rose-lipped within, and of many delicate hues. There were some that resembled gigantic snail shells, and others shaped like the cornucopias, used to hold sugar-plums for children. One species, the most remarkable of all, was composed of a substance, resembling mother-of-pearl, exquisitely beautiful, but very fragile, breaking easily, if you but set foot on one of them: they were changeable in colour, being of a dazzling white, a pearly blue, or a delicate pale green, as viewed in different lights. Scattered here and there, among these deserted tenements of various kinds of shell-fish, were the beautiful exuviae and skeletons of star-fish, and sea-eggs; while in the shallow water, numerous living specimens could be seen moving lazily about. Among these last, I noticed a couple of sea-porcupines, bristling with their long, fine, flexible quills, and an enormous conch crawling along the bottom with his house on his back, the locomotive power being entirely out of sight.Johnny seemed for the moment to have forgotten every thing else, in the contemplation of these treasures; and it was not until Arthur reminded him that there was no one to remove or appropriate them, and that he could get as many as he wanted at any time, that he desisted from his work, and reluctantly consented to postpone making a collection for the present.Having drawn the boat high up on the beach, and armed ourselves with a cutlass apiece, (Johnny taking possession of the longest one of the lot), we commenced our march along the shore, to the right, without further delay.We had by this time scarcely a remaining doubt that the island was uninhabited. No palm-thatched huts occupied the open spaces, or crowned the little eminences that diversified its windward side; no wreaths of smoke could be seen rising above the tops of the groves; no canoes, full of tattooed savages, glided over the still waters within the reef; and no merry troops of bathers pursued their sports in the surf. There was nothing to impart life and animation to the scene, but the varied evolutions of the myriads of sea-fowl, continually swooping, and screaming around us. With this exception, a silence like that of the first Sabbath brooded over the island, which appeared as fresh, and as free from every trace of the presence of man, as if it had newly sprung into existence.With the continued absence of every indication of inhabitants our feeling of security had increased to such an extent, that even Johnny ventured sometimes to straggle behind, or to run on before, and occasionally made a hasty incursion into the borders of the grove, though he took care never to be far out of sight or hearing of the main body. Soon after starting, we doubled a projecting promontory, and lost sight of the boat and the islet. The reef bent round to the north, preserving nearly a uniform distance from the shore, and was without any break or opening.The forest in most places, extended nearly to the beach, and was composed chiefly of hibiscus, pandanus, and cocoa-nut trees, with here and there a large pisonia, close to the lagoon. One gigantic specimen of this last species, which we stopped a moment to admire, could not have been less than twenty feet in girth. Max, Morton, Arthur, and myself, could not quite span it, taking hold of hands, and Johnny had to join the ring, to make it complete. For several hours we continued our journey pretty steadily, encountering no living thing, except tern, gannets, and other sea-birds, and one troop of gaudy little paroquets, glittering in green, and orange, and crimson. These paroquets were the only land-birds we saw during the day. Max pronounced them “frights,” because of their large hooked bills, and harsh discordant cries. They certainly gave Johnny, a terrible “fright,” and indeed startled us all a little, by suddenly taking wing, with loud, hoarse screams, from a hibiscus, beneath which we were resting, without having observed that they were perched over our heads.When it was near noon, and we had travelled, as we supposed, making allowance for delays and deviations, some six or eight miles, the character of the shore suddenly changed. The white, shelving beach, and the dense groves meeting it near the water, now disappeared, and were succeeded by an open strip of land, bordering the lagoon, strewed with huge, irregular fragments of coral rock, and seamed with gullies. The line of the forest here receded some distance from the shore, leaving a broad rounded point, embracing a large area of low and barren ground, covered thinly with a growth of stunted shrubs, and a few straggling, solitary looking trees. The lagoon was at this point quite shallow, and low rocks and coral patches appeared above the surface, at short distances apart, nearly to the centre of the channel. The reef opposite, was entirely under water, and its position was indicated only by a line of breakers. A large portion of the point, comprising several acres, was covered with the rude nests of various aquatic birds. Many of these nests were occupied even at that hour, and the birds seemed in no wise alarmed, or even disturbed by our approach. When we came very close to any of them, they would survey us with an air half angry, and half inquisitive, stretching out their long necks; and screwing their heads from side to side, so as to obtain a view of us first with one eye, and then with the other; this seeming to be considered indispensable to a complete and satisfactory understanding of our character and intentions. After a thorough scrutiny, they would resume their former appearance of stupid indifference, as though we were creatures altogether too unimportant to merit further notice. They all, without exception, seemed perfectly tame and fearless, and quite ready to resent any infringement upon their rights.Johnny, while inspecting too closely the nest of one of them, curiously constructed of long stiff reeds, resembling rods of steel, suddenly received, as a rebuke for his impertinence, a blow from the wing of the offended owner, which laid him sprawling upon his back.Notwithstanding this severe lesson, the gentle and amiable aspect of a large white bird, so far reassured him, that he ventured to make some friendly advances, whereupon he got so severely pecked, that he at once gave up all further attempts at familiarity with any of them. This harsh treatment, in fact, so disgusted Johnny with the whole race of sea-birds, and so impaired his faith in their innocent and inoffensive looks, that he declared he would never have any thing more to do with them, “since that beautiful white bird had bitten him so savagely, when he only offered to stroke its neck.”Some of these birds were very large and strong: in several of the unoccupied nests I saw eggs, as large as those of the duck: they were of different colours some of them prettily speckled or mottled, but most were of an ash colour, or a whitish brown. Eiulo pointed out two kinds, which he said were highly prized for food, and which, as we afterwards found, were, in fact, nearly equal to the eggs of the domestic duck.The heat had by this time become exceedingly uncomfortable, and we concluded to halt until it should abate a little, at the first convenient and pleasant spot. Leaving the shore, which, besides being unsheltered from the sun, was so rugged with crevices and gullies, and great irregular blocks of coral, as to be almost impassable, we entered the borders of the wood, and took a short cut across the point. Johnny, in imitation of the desert islanders of the story-books, desired to give appropriate names to all the interesting or remarkable localities with which we became acquainted. He had already christened the little island on which we had first landed, “Palm-Islet,” and the spot upon the opposite shore, abounding in brilliant shells, had, from that circumstance, received the impromptu name of “Pearl-shell Beach.” He now proposed to call the point, “Cape Desolation,” from its waste and forbidding aspect; but finally fixed upon “Sea-bird’s Point,” as being more appropriate, the birds having, in fact, taken possession of nearly its entire area, which, judging from the warlike spirit they had displayed, they were likely to hold against all comers. Having crossed the point and reached the lagoon again, we found that the shore resumed its former character. The forest again extended nearly to the beach, but it was more open, and not so thickly wooded as before, and the trees were of a finer growth, and in much greater variety; many of them being of kinds unknown to any of us. We had not proceeded far, after regaining the beach, when we espied just such a resting-place as we were in search of.

“They linger there while weeks and months go by,And hold their hope, tho’ weeks and months are past;And still at morning round the farthest sky,And still at eve, their eager glance is cast,If there they may behold the far-off mastArise, for which they have not ceased to pray.”

“They linger there while weeks and months go by,And hold their hope, tho’ weeks and months are past;And still at morning round the farthest sky,And still at eve, their eager glance is cast,If there they may behold the far-off mastArise, for which they have not ceased to pray.”

For a number of days we remained upon the islet where we had first landed, seldom visiting even the adjacent shore. During this time we subsisted upon cocoa-nuts and a small species of shell-fish, resembling mussels, which we obtained in abundance from the ledges of the neighbouring reef, and which the little native told us, were used as a common article of food among his own people. We had reason to feel grateful that, while we were as feeble and incapable of exertion as we found ourselves for some days, food could be so readily procured. It was also fortunate that during this period the weather continued remarkably fine and mild, with no perceptible variations of temperature; for I have little doubt that in the reduced and exhausted condition in which we then were, and being without any effectual shelter, two or three days of bad weather would have cost some of us our lives. The nights were dry and mild, and no dew seemed to fall upon the islet: thanks to this genial weather, and to abundance of nourishing food, we began rapidly to recover strength.

Some time passed before we thought of making any attempt to penetrate or explore the island. We were, naturally, very reluctant to admit even to ourselves, the probability that our stay upon it was to be of any long duration; and we did not therefore feel as much interest in its character and resources as we should otherwise have done. All our thoughts and hopes ran in one channel. We looked for the coming of a ship to rescue us from our dreary position; and every morning and evening, at least, and generally many times a day, some one of us climbed into the tuft of an inclining palm, to take a careful survey of that portion of the ocean, which could be seen from our side of the island. The thought of acting in any respect as though the lonely spot where we now found ourselves was destined to be our permanent abode, was in fact too painful and repugnant to our feelings to be willingly entertained; we were content therefore, to provide for our daily wants as they arose, without anticipating or preparing for the future.

A few days passed in this unvaried and monotonous routine, seemed in reality a long period; recent occurrences began to assume the vagueness of things that had happened years ago. I remember particularly, that, in looking back at the dreadful scenes of the mutiny, and our subsequent sufferings at sea, the whole seemed unreal, and more like a horrible dream, than an actual part of our past experience.

We soon found that this inert and aimless mode of living—this state of passive expectation, while awaiting the occurrence of an event which we could do nothing to procure or hasten, was a most miserable one: though our physical strength was in a great measure recruited, there was no increase of cheerfulness. Except when engaged in procuring food, or making our daily surveys of the ocean, (which was all our occupation), we were dispirited and listless.

Arthur perceived the evil of this state of things, and set himself to devising a remedy.

We had been at the island about two weeks, when he proposed, one morning, that we should go over to the mainland and commence a search for water, making an excursion a little way into the interior, if it should prove necessary.

Max objected to this, saying that we had no need of water, since we could, without doubt, obtain cocoa-nut milk as long as we should be obliged to remain upon the island, and that by going into the interior, out of sight of the ocean, we might lose an opportunity of being rescued.

To this, Arthur replied, that the exclusive use of cocoa-nut milk was considered very unwholesome, and was supposed to be the cause of certain dropsical complaints, common among the natives of many of the Pacific islands; that beside; it was by no means certain that a supply of it could be obtained throughout the year. He finally suggested the possibility that our stay on the island might be longer than we anticipated, in which case its resources, and the means of subsistence which it afforded, would be matters of great interest to us. In regard to the danger which Max seemed chiefly to fear, he said that we should seldom altogether lose sight of the ocean, but might, on the contrary, obtain a wider view of it from other parts of the island. I warmly seconded Arthur’s proposal, for I perceived the probable beneficial effects of effort, or occupation, of almost any kind. Morton also was decidedly in favour of it; and Johnny, who had recovered strength and spirits wonderfully within the last few days, was quite enthusiastic for the excursion. He calculated confidently upon our discovering a creek of fresh water, full of fishes and lobsters, and cited the history of the Swiss family Robinson, in support of the reasonableness of these expectations; declaring that for us part, he could not see why we might not count upon equal good fortune with them. Browne seemed indifferent about the matter. The little native, (whose name, upon Arthur’s authority, I shall write “Eiulo,” though “Iooloo,” comes nearer to the sound, as he himself pronounced it), shared in Johnny’s delight in prospect of the expedition; indeed, the two had already become the best friends in the world, notwithstanding the difficulty of communicating with one another, and seemed to harmonise in every thing. The excursion was accordingly determined upon, and this being so, there was nothing to prevent our setting out at once.

Morton proposed that, instead of undertaking to penetrate into the interior, we should keep along the shore to the northward, as by that means some idea might be gained of the extent of the island; and since any considerable spring or stream must find its way to the sea, we should also be more likely to discover water, than by pursuing the other course. Along the southern shore, the land was lower and less uneven than in the opposite direction, and held forth a slighter prospect of springs or streams. The difficulty of holding a straight course through the forest, where we should be without any means of ascertaining the points of the compass, was a consideration of great weight, and Morton’s plan was at last adopted, as being upon the whole the best.

The sun was not more than half an hour high, when we pushed off from the shore of the islet, and rowed over towards the mainland. The morning was fine and clear, and either the fresh, bracing sea-air, or the stir and excitement of setting out upon our expedition, had an exhilarating influence, for we gradually became quite cheerful, and even animated; and the faces of my companions began to brighten up with more of the old familiar expression, than I had seen there for many a day.

The merest breath of a breeze just stirred the crisp leaves of the palms upon the neighbouring shore; the tiny wavelets rippled softly upon the snowy, shell-spangled beach, or, out in the lagoon, danced and sparkled in the sunlight; still further out and just beyond the barrier that fenced in this quiet and secluded scene from the open ocean, we could see the huge blue rollers with their foaming crests surging high into the air; and the heavy booming of the surf, as it thundered upon the reef, might be heard for miles around, amid the prevailing silence. Beyond this again, stretched away to the horizon, the blue, swelling arch of the ocean—a clear, deep, intense blue, contrasting beautifully with the paler blue of the sky, against which it was relieved, and with the emerald expanse of the lagoon.

Browne gazed about him with more interest than I had yet seen him manifest in any thing since we had reached the island. He inhaled the fresh morning air with the appearance of actual relish and enjoyment and at last, to my surprise, (for Max had accused him, not without some reason, of having been the most lugubrious of our party), he began to sing to a brisk and cheerful tune—

“O, happy days of hope and restShall dawn on sorrow’s dreary night,Though grief may be an evening guest,Yet joy shall come with morning light!The light of smiles shall beam again,From lids that now o’erflow with tears,And weary hours of woe and pain,Are earnests of serener years.”

“O, happy days of hope and restShall dawn on sorrow’s dreary night,Though grief may be an evening guest,Yet joy shall come with morning light!The light of smiles shall beam again,From lids that now o’erflow with tears,And weary hours of woe and pain,Are earnests of serener years.”

“Well,” said he, as he finished his song, “this may be a desert island, but I will defy any one to gainsay that the morning is delicious, and the scene a right lovely one.”

“I am glad you begin to wake up to it,” said Morton, “it looks very much as it has at this hour for ten days past.”

“No, no,” protested Browne, “this bright, clear atmosphere makes a very great difference in the appearance of things: we have had no such mornings as this.”

“I wish you could manage to enjoy it,” said Max, “without missing every other stroke, and digging me so unmercifully in the back with your oar-handle; if you can’t, I must ask you to change seats with me, and let me take the bow-oar.”

“How natural and refreshing that sounds!” cried Morton, laughing; “it is a sure token that prospects are brightening, and serious dangers are over, when we find ourselves again in a condition to scold about trifles.”

“It isn’t such a trifle, to be thumped and mauled with the butt of an oar, as I have been all the while Browne was singing, and rhapsodising, and going into ecstasies about the beauty of the morning; which is just such another as we have had ever since we have been here; all the difference being in his feelings, which happen to be a shade or two less doleful than usual, and so cause things to look brighter.”

“Perhaps you would have me believe,” answered Browne, “that the sun will invariably shine when I chance to be in good spirits, and that a thunder-storm would be the natural consequence of my having a fit of the blues?”

“I should be sorry if that were the case,” replied Max, “as we should then be sure to have a large average of bad weather.”

“This excursion reminds me of our school-days,” said Arthur; “it almost seems as though we were once more starting off together, on one of our Saturday rambles, as we have so often done on fine summer and autumn mornings at home.”

“I think I shall never forget those forays through the woods,” said Morton, “over hill and hollow, in search of nuts, or berries, or wild-grapes, or meadow-plums—the fishing and swimming in summer, the snow-balling, and sledding, and skating, in winter! an innocent and happy set of urchins we were then!”

“Really,” said Max, laughing, “to hear you one would suppose that we were now a conclave of venerable, grey-haired sages, scarcely able to remember the time when we were children, and so full of wisdom and experience, that we had long ago ceased to be ‘innocent and happy.’”

“Without professing to be so wise or experienced, as to be very unhappy on that account,” returned Morton, “I suppose I may say that I am old enough, and sufficiently changed since those days, to feel, as I now look back upon them with a sigh, their peculiar happiness, so unlike any thing that after-life affords.”

“How singular it is,” said Browne, “that you four who were playmates when children, should have happened to keep together so long.”

“And still find ourselves together on an island in the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from home,” added Arthur.

“After quitting school,” continued Browne, “I never met with any of my comrades there. Of all the mates with whom I used on the Saturday half-holydays, to go gathering hips and haws, or angling in the Clyde, I have not since come in contact with one.”

“It don’t seem at all like Saturday to me,” said Johnny, who for some minutes past had appeared to have something on his mind, as to the expediency of communicating which he was undecided; “I was afraid that it was Sunday, every thing is so still; but I hope it is not, for Arthur would not think it right to start upon an exploring expedition on Sunday, and so it would be put off.”

“Truly,” said Browne, “that is extremely flattering to the rest of us. Do you think we are all heathens, except Arthur? I, for one, have no notion of becoming a savage, because I am on a desert island; I shall go for maintaining the decencies of Christianity and civilisation.”

“Does any one know what day it really is?” inquired Morton.

Max said he believed it was Monday. Arthur thought it was Wednesday, and added that he had memoranda, from which he had no doubt he could fix the day with certainty.

“It was on Friday,” said Max, “that the mutiny took place, and that we got to sea in the boat.”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “and it was on Wednesday night, I think, five days afterwards, that we landed here.”

“Five days!” cried Max. “Do you mean to say that we were but five days at sea before reaching the island?”

“I think that is all,” replied Arthur, “though the time certainly seems much longer. Then, if my calculations are correct, we have been here just two weeks to-day, so that this is Wednesday. But,” continued he, “as our heavenly Father has thus guided our little bark safe through this wilderness of waters, let us celebrate the day of our landing on this ‘Canaan,’ by making it our first Sabbath, and our grateful voices shall every seventh day, from this, be lifted up in praise and thanksgiving for the mercy thus vouchsafed to us.”

While this conversation was going on, we reached the shore. Johnny scrambled eagerly to the bow, anxious to be the first to land, and he attained this object of his ambition, by jumping into the water nearly up to his waist, before the boat was fairly beached. Then, after gazing around him a moment with exclamations of wonder and admiration, he suddenly commenced running up and down the wide, firm beach, gathering shells, with as much zeal and earnestness, as though he was spending a holiday by the sea-side at home, and could tie up these pretty curiosities in his handkerchief, and run back with them in five minutes to his father’s house. There was certainly some ground for Johnny’s admiration; just at the spot where we had landed, the shore was thickly strewn, in a manner which I had never before seen equalled, with varieties of the most curious and beautiful shells. They were of all sizes, and of every conceivable shape and colour. The surfaces of some were smooth and highly polished; others were scolloped, or fluted, or marked with wave-like undulations. There were little rice and cowrie shells; mottled tiger shells; spider shells, with their long, sharp spikes; immense conches, rough, and covered with great knobs on the outside, but smooth and rose-lipped within, and of many delicate hues. There were some that resembled gigantic snail shells, and others shaped like the cornucopias, used to hold sugar-plums for children. One species, the most remarkable of all, was composed of a substance, resembling mother-of-pearl, exquisitely beautiful, but very fragile, breaking easily, if you but set foot on one of them: they were changeable in colour, being of a dazzling white, a pearly blue, or a delicate pale green, as viewed in different lights. Scattered here and there, among these deserted tenements of various kinds of shell-fish, were the beautiful exuviae and skeletons of star-fish, and sea-eggs; while in the shallow water, numerous living specimens could be seen moving lazily about. Among these last, I noticed a couple of sea-porcupines, bristling with their long, fine, flexible quills, and an enormous conch crawling along the bottom with his house on his back, the locomotive power being entirely out of sight.

Johnny seemed for the moment to have forgotten every thing else, in the contemplation of these treasures; and it was not until Arthur reminded him that there was no one to remove or appropriate them, and that he could get as many as he wanted at any time, that he desisted from his work, and reluctantly consented to postpone making a collection for the present.

Having drawn the boat high up on the beach, and armed ourselves with a cutlass apiece, (Johnny taking possession of the longest one of the lot), we commenced our march along the shore, to the right, without further delay.

We had by this time scarcely a remaining doubt that the island was uninhabited. No palm-thatched huts occupied the open spaces, or crowned the little eminences that diversified its windward side; no wreaths of smoke could be seen rising above the tops of the groves; no canoes, full of tattooed savages, glided over the still waters within the reef; and no merry troops of bathers pursued their sports in the surf. There was nothing to impart life and animation to the scene, but the varied evolutions of the myriads of sea-fowl, continually swooping, and screaming around us. With this exception, a silence like that of the first Sabbath brooded over the island, which appeared as fresh, and as free from every trace of the presence of man, as if it had newly sprung into existence.

With the continued absence of every indication of inhabitants our feeling of security had increased to such an extent, that even Johnny ventured sometimes to straggle behind, or to run on before, and occasionally made a hasty incursion into the borders of the grove, though he took care never to be far out of sight or hearing of the main body. Soon after starting, we doubled a projecting promontory, and lost sight of the boat and the islet. The reef bent round to the north, preserving nearly a uniform distance from the shore, and was without any break or opening.

The forest in most places, extended nearly to the beach, and was composed chiefly of hibiscus, pandanus, and cocoa-nut trees, with here and there a large pisonia, close to the lagoon. One gigantic specimen of this last species, which we stopped a moment to admire, could not have been less than twenty feet in girth. Max, Morton, Arthur, and myself, could not quite span it, taking hold of hands, and Johnny had to join the ring, to make it complete. For several hours we continued our journey pretty steadily, encountering no living thing, except tern, gannets, and other sea-birds, and one troop of gaudy little paroquets, glittering in green, and orange, and crimson. These paroquets were the only land-birds we saw during the day. Max pronounced them “frights,” because of their large hooked bills, and harsh discordant cries. They certainly gave Johnny, a terrible “fright,” and indeed startled us all a little, by suddenly taking wing, with loud, hoarse screams, from a hibiscus, beneath which we were resting, without having observed that they were perched over our heads.

When it was near noon, and we had travelled, as we supposed, making allowance for delays and deviations, some six or eight miles, the character of the shore suddenly changed. The white, shelving beach, and the dense groves meeting it near the water, now disappeared, and were succeeded by an open strip of land, bordering the lagoon, strewed with huge, irregular fragments of coral rock, and seamed with gullies. The line of the forest here receded some distance from the shore, leaving a broad rounded point, embracing a large area of low and barren ground, covered thinly with a growth of stunted shrubs, and a few straggling, solitary looking trees. The lagoon was at this point quite shallow, and low rocks and coral patches appeared above the surface, at short distances apart, nearly to the centre of the channel. The reef opposite, was entirely under water, and its position was indicated only by a line of breakers. A large portion of the point, comprising several acres, was covered with the rude nests of various aquatic birds. Many of these nests were occupied even at that hour, and the birds seemed in no wise alarmed, or even disturbed by our approach. When we came very close to any of them, they would survey us with an air half angry, and half inquisitive, stretching out their long necks; and screwing their heads from side to side, so as to obtain a view of us first with one eye, and then with the other; this seeming to be considered indispensable to a complete and satisfactory understanding of our character and intentions. After a thorough scrutiny, they would resume their former appearance of stupid indifference, as though we were creatures altogether too unimportant to merit further notice. They all, without exception, seemed perfectly tame and fearless, and quite ready to resent any infringement upon their rights.

Johnny, while inspecting too closely the nest of one of them, curiously constructed of long stiff reeds, resembling rods of steel, suddenly received, as a rebuke for his impertinence, a blow from the wing of the offended owner, which laid him sprawling upon his back.

Notwithstanding this severe lesson, the gentle and amiable aspect of a large white bird, so far reassured him, that he ventured to make some friendly advances, whereupon he got so severely pecked, that he at once gave up all further attempts at familiarity with any of them. This harsh treatment, in fact, so disgusted Johnny with the whole race of sea-birds, and so impaired his faith in their innocent and inoffensive looks, that he declared he would never have any thing more to do with them, “since that beautiful white bird had bitten him so savagely, when he only offered to stroke its neck.”

Some of these birds were very large and strong: in several of the unoccupied nests I saw eggs, as large as those of the duck: they were of different colours some of them prettily speckled or mottled, but most were of an ash colour, or a whitish brown. Eiulo pointed out two kinds, which he said were highly prized for food, and which, as we afterwards found, were, in fact, nearly equal to the eggs of the domestic duck.

The heat had by this time become exceedingly uncomfortable, and we concluded to halt until it should abate a little, at the first convenient and pleasant spot. Leaving the shore, which, besides being unsheltered from the sun, was so rugged with crevices and gullies, and great irregular blocks of coral, as to be almost impassable, we entered the borders of the wood, and took a short cut across the point. Johnny, in imitation of the desert islanders of the story-books, desired to give appropriate names to all the interesting or remarkable localities with which we became acquainted. He had already christened the little island on which we had first landed, “Palm-Islet,” and the spot upon the opposite shore, abounding in brilliant shells, had, from that circumstance, received the impromptu name of “Pearl-shell Beach.” He now proposed to call the point, “Cape Desolation,” from its waste and forbidding aspect; but finally fixed upon “Sea-bird’s Point,” as being more appropriate, the birds having, in fact, taken possession of nearly its entire area, which, judging from the warlike spirit they had displayed, they were likely to hold against all comers. Having crossed the point and reached the lagoon again, we found that the shore resumed its former character. The forest again extended nearly to the beach, but it was more open, and not so thickly wooded as before, and the trees were of a finer growth, and in much greater variety; many of them being of kinds unknown to any of us. We had not proceeded far, after regaining the beach, when we espied just such a resting-place as we were in search of.

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