Daylight came at last, and it was now found that the Sea Flower had been lifted by the mighty wave, and after being dashed into a gully in the barrier of rocks that stretched along the eastern side of Treachery Bay, had been left there high and dry.
The marvel is that, although several of the hands had been more or less shaken and bruised, no one was killed.
The position of the wrecked barque was indeed a strange one. Luckily for her the sea had risen when the tide was highest, so that she now lay on an even keel upon the shelf of rocks, twenty feet above the bay at low water.
The monster wave seemed to have made a clean breach of the lowland part of the island, and gone surging in through the dead forest, smashing thousands of the blackened trees to the ground, and quite denuding all that were left of their beautiful drapery of foliage, climbing flowers, and floral parasites.
At each side of the gully the black rocks towered like walls above the hulk, but landwards, a green bank, of easy ascent, sloped up to the well-wooded table-land above.
As speedily as possible the main part of the wreckage was cleared away. This consisted of a terrible entanglement of ropes and rigging. But the spars were sawn up into lengths that could be easily moved, and so, in a few hours’ time, the unfortunate Sea Flower was simply a dismantled hulk.
When the work was finally accomplished, the men were permitted to go below, to cook breakfast, and sleep if they had a mind to.
But not till prayers were said, and thanks, fervent and heartfelt, offered up to the God who, although He had seen fit to wreck the ship, had so mercifully spared the lives of all.