He could see little but these beautiful vegetable productions, save farther along the shore, and beyond the belt of cocoa-nut trees a pile of rocks ran right down into the water; but from a glimpse here and there it was evident that there were tall trees and high ground beyond the palms.
Greatest boon of all to his eyes was the sun, which was not yet high, but whose warm beams provided him with an invigorating bath and seemed to send life and hope and strength into his cramped and chilled limbs.
He turned to look in another direction, and found that the boat was within a few yards of the pure white sands of a sort of spit or point which ran down into the lagoon, whose limpid waters were sheltered by the barrier reef; and as he wondered how it was that they had not drifted quite ashore he realised that the sail with its yard half sunken beneath the surface had caught in a piece of jagged coral rock, which rose from the bottom covered with its freight of animation, and to this they were anchored.
“Shall I wake them?” thought Mark as he looked round him at the sleeping people; but he did not stir, for the act seemed cruel. They were sleeping soundly and resting; the sun was rising higher and drying their wet garments; and at last, deciding that it would be wiser to let them wake of themselves, he turned his longing eyes to the soft white sand, which he felt must be warm, and it was all he could do to keep from lowering himself over the side and wading ashore, to lie down in it, to cover his limbs with it, and try once more to sleep.
The act would have aroused the sufferers about him, and he refrained, contenting himself with gazing down over the side at the coral rock three feet below the bottom of the boat, and seeing there among the miniature groves of wondrously tinted weeds shoals of silvery fish; translucent shrimps; curiously long snaky, scaly looking objects which wound in and out and undulated among the weeds, while every here and there played about some tiny chubby-looking fish like a fat young John Dory, but gorgeous in colour in the sunlit waters almost beyond description, so vivid were the bands of orange, purple, azure-blue, green, and gold.
Every here and there were curious shell-fish, some creeping like snails with their heavy houses upon their backs, others were oyster and mussel like, anchored and lying with their valvular shells half open; while a couple of yards away lay one monster about two feet long, a bivalve with ponderous shells, whose edges were waved in three folds, and a glance inside whose opening showed a lining of the most delicate pinky tint.
The warmth of the sun and the wonders of the coral-reef beneath his eyes made Mark forget his troubles for a time, but he was recalled to his position by his sensations of hunger, a whine from Bruff, and an inquiring chatter from the monkey, who changed his position and sat up on one of the thwarts looking very skinny and miserable, his face wrinkled and puckered, and the appealing inquiring look in his eyes growing more intense.
Mark gazed from one countenance to the other, all haggard and troubled, and he was beginning to long to awaken some one when the major stirred slightly, and drawing a long breath rolled the half cigar to and fro between his lips. Then without unclosing his eyes he grunted out:
“Bring me a light.”
Miserable, wet, and hungry as he was, Mark could not restrain a smile.