The words were brave and mettlesome enough. But there was no weight in them. All was hollow; and the seamen listening were nothing slow to divine this. The speech fell short of the mark, moving no man. Wallis, indeed, was weighed in the balance and found wanting there and then; for, when a seaman asked, “And would you go along with us, Wallis?” he halted out, “Nay, shipmate, for I must mind the ship”—an answer which put a period to that enterprise.
The seamen held off glum and murmuring, no man offering. If, however, they had no stomach for the work, Thalass and I were even eager to set foot on the island; and, when Wallis and the rest perceived this, they were nothing backward to encourage us, giving us good words, proffering us small-arms and ammunition, whilst some ran to the cook-room to fetch victuals for us, and others put themselves into the jolly-boat to row us ashore.
Surgeon Burke would have gone with us, but it seemed to him, and to us also, that his duty lay rather in remaining on the ship.
Our first care on landing was to search the parts of shore for the dead body of the Captain, for we doubted not that he was dead; but found nothing.
After that, we turned alongshore to the southward, looking out for an opening into the island. Thalass told me that he was able to guide me to the habitation of the pirates, but, however, that it was far distant at the south side of the island, and the journey and return not possibly to be accomplished before night, to say nothing of the risk we would run by attempting it. I answered that therefore we should not attempt it, but take instead a random course, making what discoveries we could.
We advanced warily, having each of us a loaded pistol in his hand; and, coming round an elbow of the cliff beneath a gigantic headland, we lost sight of the ship. The character of the prospect remained unchanged, the bleached white sands stretching away to the next bend, the towering cliffs frowning upon us. The Indian marched briskly at my side, perfectly at his ease, as it should seem, and fearing no evil; but I went harassed with a thousand apprehensions, and was sometimes brought to a stand by fantastical alarms.
The dreadful death-cry of my brother still sounded in my ears, and even more than the apparition on the shore, it put a fear on me. One while glancing back fearfully over my shoulder, another while looking aloft at those stupendous summits, I went, indeed, like a haunted man.
At length, being gotten about a league along the shore, we spied that we were looking out for—an opening in the cliffs. For, a little in advance of us, as we coasted round beneath a headland, the cliffs were quite broken off about two ships’ lengths, leaving an inlet of the island indeed!
A spacious and gentle valley it was, sloping from the shore between the ends of the cliffs, which were all hung about with vines, and adorned with waving groves and rustling tall tufted grasses and flowers crimson blue and green. We immediately began to ascend, making towards a colossal boulder of rock near forty feet in height. Coming up to it, we climbed, by jagged ridges, creepers and rockweed, to the top, and there stood to view the country.
’Twas a charming panorama—champaign, woody, and rocky in grateful alternation, or confused and intermingled as in some silent conflict; but of man, or man’s habitation, not a trace! I asked Thalass whether this part of the island was really uninhabited; he answered after his broken manner: