第 6 页

While serving out the food and water—the allowance of the latter I had increased to a quart per day since the rain had enabled us to re-fill our breakers—and during the progress of the meal, I narrowly watched the behaviour of the boat and the run of the sea, and finally came to the conclusion that if the weather continued to improve at the same rate we might venture to get under way again before sunset. This sanguine view was confirmed, and about four o’clock in the afternoon I gave the order to haul aboard and unlash the oars, and to step the mast and set the sail. The wind had by that time decreased to such an extent that the boat would safely carry whole canvas, while the sea no longer broke, but there was still so heavy a swell running that every time the boat sank into a hollow her sail collapsed to the mast, completely becalmed under the lea of the great liquid hill to windward, to fill again with a sudden flap and a jerk of the sheet as we were lifted heavenward upon its advancing slope. To sail the boat under such conditions was rather nervous work at the outset, for there was scarcely time for her to gather way at each upheaval before she was becalmed in the next trough, losing way to such an extent that she was liable to fall off and get broadside-on to the sea to a dangerous extent; but after half an hour of such work I caught the trick of humouring her through the calm spells, and then we managed better, although not doing more than a couple of knots per hour. Even the swell, however, grew steadily less dangerous with the passage of the hours; and by midnight the conditions had so improved that I felt I might safely turn the boat over to the care of the two seamen for the remainder of the night and secure for myself a little more much-needed sleep.

It seemed to me that I had barely lost consciousness when I was aroused by the touch of a hand, and the voice of Dartnell, the ordinary seaman, in my ear, murmuring—

“Mr Massey, Mr Massey! rouse and bitt, sir. There’s land in sight!”

“Land?” I repeated. “The dickens there is! Where away?” And, rising hastily but quietly from my recumbent position, so that I might not disturb any of the other sleepers, I seated myself on the thwart beside the speaker—to find that day had broken, that it was a gloriously fine, clear morning, with a nice brisk little breeze blowing, rippling the surface of the ocean into a multitude of sparkling wavelets, and that the boat was bowling merrily along, almost gunwale-to, over a sapphire sea heaving gently in long, low mounds of swell that came sweeping solemnly up from the southward.

“Where away is your land, Dartnell?” I repeated, peering out under the foot of the sail in the direction toward which the man was pointing.

“Out there, sir, broad on our lee bow,” answered Dartnell, in low, eager tones. “Wait till she lifts on the back of the swell, and you’ll see it—there ye are, sir. D’ye see it? That’s land, plain enough, or I never see’d none in my life.”

“Yes, you are right, Dartnell,” I replied, unconsciously raising my voice in my excitement as, the boat lifting, I caught a glimpse of a pale blue hummock, about three points on our lee bow, standing out sharply defined and clear-cut against the warm pallor of the north-western horizon. “That is land, sure enough. But it is a long way off—”

“Land?” exclaimed Oldroyd, starting up, and staring hard at me. “Did I hear you say something about land, Massey?”

“Yes,” I replied. “It is true. There is land in sight on the lee bow; but still a long way off. Not far short of thirty miles, I should say.”

“Pooh! what does that matter, so long as it is in sight?” he exclaimed, eagerly, starting to his feet. “Where is it? Show it me. The sight of a chunk of dry land is the thing I most want to see in the world, just now.”

I pointed it out, and then to the others, all of whom had by this time been awakened by our excited voices; and then all hands began to bombard me with questions, some wanting to know how long it would be before we could reach it, while others wanted me to give it a name.

But I could give no satisfactory reply to either question. As regards the first, I had to explain to them that it would depend upon whether or not the breeze held steady. If it did, we might hope to step ashore in another six hours—if, upon a nearer view of the island, it should seem safe to land there. With regard to the other question—that of giving the island a name—I was figuratively as well as literally “at sea”, for I had no chart to consult, while, to be perfectly candid, with the hazy knowledge of our whereabouts which I possessed, I had scarcely hoped to make a landfall so soon. Then the Doctor wanted to know what I meant by the proviso—“if it should seem safe to land there,” and I had to explain that certain of the Pacific islands were inhabited by savages who welcomed strangers to their shores chiefly as an addition to their larder. Oldroyd and Mason, however, quickly reminded me that they had brought their rifles and a goodly supply of ammunition and we soon agreed that, unless a hostile demonstration in overwhelming force should be made upon our approach, we would at least land and reconnoitre. Somebody remarked that there might be no savages; that the island might be uninhabited. But I felt it necessary to discourage any such hope, the island in sight was too big to be entirely without inhabitants.

Fortunately, the breeze held and the boat went buzzing along at a merry pace, yet the time seemed long before we felt that we had materially reduced our distance from the island. But as the minutes sped some of us at least were able to note those subtle changes in the appearance of the island which marked our steady approach. Originally a faint blue silhouette just showing clear of the horizon when the boat lifted upon the back of a swell, it might easily have been mistaken by a landsman for part of a cloud, of which we lost sight every time the boat sank into the trough. But as time passed on the outline of the silhouette grew more sharply defined, its colour deepened from pale, delicate blue to dove-grey, it towered higher above the horizon, and stretched for a greater length along it. Next came a subtle change of colour, the uniform hue of dove-grey deepening here and lightening there until the flat surface became broken up into distinct projections and recessions which, in turn, became further broken up into suggestions of hill and ravine as the all-pervading tint of grey began to melt into varying shades of green. The next distinct change of which we were conscious was when the flat, silhouette appearance broke up into a perspective of varying distances and the highest point of the island, shaggy with vegetation, towered high enough into the sky to remain visible even when the boat settled into the trough.

From the moment when the island was first sighted, I had been keeping my luff, my intention being to examine the weather side of the island first, thus I had continued to keep it about three points on our lee bow during the whole time of our approach. It was while we were getting our mid-day meal—the last, as we hoped, we should be called upon to take in the boat—that we first became aware of a sort of whiteness, like puffs of steam, showing at the southern extremity of the island, which was the extremity nearest us. These appearances occurred pretty regularly at intervals of about ten seconds, and by the time that the meal was over I had identified them as bursts of spray leaping high into the air with the impact of the swell upon the shore. As we stood on, the leap of the breakers and the bursts of spray became clearer, while at the same time they manifested a tendency to reach out athwart our hawse, suggesting the idea of a reef projecting from the southern extremity of the island. And such in truth it proved to be, though it was not the sort of reef I had at first supposed; that is to say, it was not an outcrop of rock jutting into the sea for a few hundred yards, but was, as we ultimately recognised, a barrier reef of coral bowing out from the southern extremity and enclosing a spacious lagoon on its south-western side.

Still holding my luff as closely as I dared, consistently with the free movement of the boat through the water, we came abreast of the southern point of the island somewhere about two o’clock in the afternoon, a mile and a half or so to windward of it, and for another hour and a half we coasted along the south-western side of the island, with a wall of white surf and diamond spray leaping into the air at intervals of ten seconds on our lee. Then, quite suddenly, we sighted what we were looking for, namely, the break in the reef which invariably occurs, giving access to the lagoon and the shore. At the distance which we were from it, it was only barely distinguishable as the slightest perceptible break in the line of surf and spray, but I knew what it was in a moment, for I had been through just such a passage once before.

“There is the mouth of our harbour,” I cried, pointing to it. “A few minutes more, and we shall be through it and in smooth water—and safety, I hope.”

“Where?” demanded the Doctor. “You surely do not mean that little narrow gap where the surf is not breaking? Why, my good fellow, this boat will never pass through there. A swimmer, going through, could touch both sides at the same moment with his outstretched hands.”

“Yes,” I said, “it looks like it, I know. But you will find that there is width enough for a ship of the Andromeda’s size to pass through.”

He was by no means reassured, however, and he presently showed how much confidence he placed in my statement, by calmly and openly kicking off his shoes.

We stood on as we were going, for about five minutes, until we were right up with and opposite the opening, then I put up the boat’s helm and bow square away, bringing the wind over the boat’s starboard quarter and necessitating a jib, which we safely accomplished. Now, running practically dead before the wind, the boat slid along in lively fashion—although she did not seem to be going as fast as when we were close-hauled—and the gap in the reef for which we were heading began to widen rapidly, while the thunder of the surf momentarily grew more deafening, until soon it was impossible to hear each other’s voices.

It was nervous work, running down before the wind, toward that leaping, spouting, raving turmoil of surf, in a deeply laden boat, with the swell catching her on the starboard quarter and doing its best to twist her off her course, and I saw more than one hand gripping the gunwale until the knuckles showed white through the skin; but, as I had assured them all, there was plenty of width in the gap, when we came to it, and in some twenty breathless seconds we slid through, to find ourselves in the smooth water of a lagoon about nine miles long, by about three and a half wide at its broadest part, which was just abreast the opening.

The change wrought by those twenty seconds consumed in the passage through the reef was, at least to those for whom the experience was new, amazing. Less than a minute before, we had been lifting and falling upon a swell some seven or eight feet in height from ridge to trough, while now we were sliding smoothly along over an expanse of water the surface of which was merely wrinkled into tiny wavelets by the soft breathing of the warm breeze. And now, with a feeling of safety to which we had all been strangers ever since that night when the Andromeda had put an end to herself by cutting in halves a waterlogged derelict, we could gaze our fill and feast our eyes upon the glorious sanctuary to which a kind Providence had guided us.

For glorious it was, at least to the eye, whatever it might prove to be upon a closer acquaintance. First, there was the lagoon, an expanse of smooth water, protected by a breakwater of Nature’s own building, spacious enough, and apparently deep enough, to form a safe anchorage for an entire navy. And beyond it rose the island, its southern extremity consisting of a rocky promontory some fifty feet high springing vertically out of the sea, from which, in a series of gentle undulations, the outline of the land swept upward to a bald white, flat-topped peak which was the summit of the island. To the left of the peak the land sloped downward again until it ended in a range of low cliffs, hidden now that we had entered the lagoon, but which I had noted during our run in toward the break in the reef. A long expanse of dazzling white sandy beach, fringed with thousands of cocoanut palms, formed the inner margin of the lagoon, and from the inner edge of the beach the whole island seemed to be densely covered with vegetation, of what kind precisely we could scarcely tell as yet, though some of it undoubtedly consisted of tall trees. But it was the variegated hues of the vegetation that most charmed the eye, for not only was there every conceivable shade of green, from that scarcely distinguishable from yellow to an olive tint that was almost black, while here and there were patches of vivid scarlet, many gradations of blue, crimson, mauve, pink and white. Truly it had all the appearance of an earthly paradise, and I most earnestly hoped that it might prove to be so indeed, for I feared that, unless the unexpected happened in the shape of a ship heaving in sight and taking us off, we were doomed to a rather prolonged sojourn upon that island. It was true of course that a ship might heave in sight at any moment, and one of our earliest tasks would have to be the provision of means to attract her attention, but I had my doubts as to the probability, for, according to the rough reckoning which I had been able to keep by means of my sextant and watch, the island was quite off the usual track of ships, while the absence of a trader’s store on the beach was strong evidence of the truth of my suspicion that the existence of the island was practically unknown.

The next matter for anxiety was the possible presence of savages and the character of the reception they would accord us. That there would be natives of some sort, gentle or otherwise, I felt convinced; the island was much too large, and apparently much too desirable in every way, to be altogether without human inhabitants, and I directed the two seamen, who were sitting for’ard, to keep a sharp look-out, while doing the same myself, so far as the intervening lugsail would permit. Momentarily I expected to see a swarm of swarthy men, armed with spears and war clubs appear upon the beach, prepared to dispute our right to land; but as the moments sped the beach remained untenanted, nor could I detect any sign of canoes, or of huts or smoke. True, inhabitants might be lying in wait to ambush us, but the absence of canoes seemed to negative such a supposition; the jollyboat was too insignificant an object to have attracted attention while we were in the offing, and so have given the natives time to hide their canoes; while there were none on the beach when we entered the lagoon.

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Chapter Five: The Island.

“There is something that I don’t quite understand about this island,” I remarked to the company in general as we continued to run in toward the beach. “It is, as you can all see, an island of considerable size, and of great fertility, judging from the dense growth of vegetation on it. It is unlikely that such an island should be uninhabited, yet I can detect no signs of any; and the absence of such signs makes me feel a trifle uneasy—”