We did not, he or I, demur to our enemy’s silence. It would have made no difference if we had. His regard, his consideration, were still all for our companion.
Across the glimmering lifts of sand, the wreck, now we were brought stationary, seemed to draw nearer and clearer—a phantom still, yet claiming some foothold on this unreal reality of an amphibious little continent. Only a broken poop it was, tilted up and its mighty entrails spilt into the drift. Another storm, any rough weather, would scatter it for ever; yet no plundered town could have stood a symbol of more awful and pathetic desolation. The haze blurred and magnified it to us where we stood; so that, huge relic as it was in reality, it looked nothing less than gigantic. Gazing on it, its ruin and isolation in that mist of waters, I felt as one might feel in alighting on a fallen colossus in a desert.
“Are we to land here?” said Joshua, breaking through the spell which had overtaken me.
“Aye,” answered the smuggler, in that one terse, low monosyllable, and with his eyes never leaving the other’s face.
“Go, you,” said Joshua, turning briskly to us two. “I will wait here, and take my turn when you’ve finished.”
We hesitated, questioning him with a dumb glance.
“Come!” he said. “The tide, as I reckon, don’t stand on ceremony.”
“Why should we any of us go, Mr. Pilbrow?” I spoke up quickly. “We can see all we want to see from here.”
“Nonsense!” he said sharply. “Who’ll credit our adventure if we don’t bring back her name?”
We still hung reluctant; but he drove us good-humouredly forward, and out over the bow. Looking back, after we had leapt to the reeking sand and were hurrying to cross it, I saw him still standing there, taut and resolute, to wave us on.