But in vain. It was not very dark, but there was a thick mist which seemed to glow faintly with a peculiar phosphorescent light that was horribly weird and strange, and after a few minutes’ effort they turned to descend to the cabin again.
“This won’t last long, sir,” shouted the old sailor in the doctor’s ear; “these sort o’ storms seldom do. Dessay it’ll be all bright sunshine in the mornin’. We’re safe as safe, with the reef and the breakers far enough away, but the old Chusan will never breast the waves again.”
“And all our friends?”
“Don’t talk about it, sir. They were in sound boats, well manned, and with good officers to each, but—oh dear! oh dear!—the sea’s hard to deal with in a storm like this.”
“Do you think, then, that there is no hope?”
“Oh no, sir, I don’t say that, for, you see, the waves didn’t run high. They may weather it all, but where they’re carried to by the wind and the awful currents there are about here no one knows.”
“But are they likely to get back to us?”
“Not a bit, sir. They don’t know where we are, and they’ll have their work cut out to find where they are themselves.”
“Have you any idea where we are—what shore this is?”
“Hardly, sir. All I do know is that from the time the typhoon struck us we must have been carried by wind and the fierce currents right away to the west and south.”