“Meanwhile, I continued my efforts to restore you to consciousness, but without success. And finally, when at length the gale had passed away and the weather had again become fine, I ventured to go up on deck to see what had happened to the ship, and what had become of the men; for, to my great surprise and alarm, none of them had come near me, or made any attempt to inquire after you, from the moment when they had helped to bring you down into the cabin!”
“And what did you find?” demanded Leslie, anxiously.
“I found,” answered Miss Trevor, “that the ship is lying stranded on an immense reef of rocks, and is within about two miles of land—a large island, I take it to be, for I can see the sea beyond each end of it. But that is not the worst of it. The ship is a complete wreck, both her masts being broken and lying in the water beside her, most of her bulwarks broken and gone, and not one of the crew to be found!”
“I must get up; I really must!” insisted Leslie. “Please do not attempt to keep me here,” he continued, as his companion strove to dissuade him from his purpose. “I must go on deck and take a look round, if only for a few minutes, just to satisfy myself as to the actualities of our situation. If I cannot do that, I shall simply lie here and worry myself into a fever, thinking and fearing every imaginable thing.”
“Well,” remarked the girl, doubtfully, “if that is to be the result of confinement to your cabin, perhaps I had better yield to your wish and allow you to go on deck, just for a few minutes. But you must promise to be very good and obedient, to do exactly as I tell you, and—in short, to leave yourself entirely in my hands. Will you?”
“Oh, of course I will,” assented Leslie, with an eagerness and alacrity that were not altogether convincing to his companion, who saw, however, that she would have to yield somewhat to this headstrong patient of hers if she wished to retain any control at all over him.
She accordingly assisted him first to sit up in his berth and then to climb out of it—he still being dressed in the clothes that he was wearing when the accident happened to him—and eventually, with very considerable difficulty—Leslie finding himself curiously weak, and so giddy that he could not stand without support—she contrived to get him up the companion ladder and out on deck, where Sailor accorded them both a boisterous and effusive welcome.
Arrived there, Leslie sank upon the short seat that ran fore and aft alongside the companion cover, and cast his eyes about him. It was a melancholy sight that met his view. The brig, with a list of about four strakes to port, was hard and fast upon the inner edge of a reef that seemed to be about a mile wide, and stretched for many miles in either direction, ahead and astern, she lying broadside-on to the run of the reef. The jury mainmast had snapped short off immediately above the lashings that bound it to the stump of the original spar, and had gone over the stern, some of its gear having evidently struck Leslie down as the spar fell. The foremast was also over the side, having gone close to the deck; and all the wreckage was still floating alongside attached to the hull by the rigging. The bulwarks had all disappeared save some ten or twelve feet on either side extending from the taffrail, forward, and a few feet in the eyes of the ship. The decks had been swept clean of every movable thing, including the longboat and the jolly-boat that had been stowed on the main hatch; and both quarter-boats had also vanished from the davits, leaving only fragments of their stem and stern-posts hanging to the tackle blocks to show what had happened to them.
No part of the reef showed above water, but its extent and limits were very clearly defined by the ripples and agitation—gentle though this last was—of the surface of the water above it. The surf was breaking heavily on its outer margin in clouds of gleaming white that flashed and glittered in the brilliant sunshine; and an occasional undulation of swell came sweeping in across the reef, causing a thousand swirls and eddies to appear as it traversed the vast barrier of submerged rock—coral, Leslie judged it to be—but it did not affect the brig in the least, sending not even the faintest tremor through her, by which the sick man judged that she must have been deposited in her present position at a moment when the level of the sea was considerably higher than it was just then. The craft was lying so close to the inner edge of the reef that had she been carried another fifty yards she would have been swept right over it; in which case she would undoubtedly have at once sunk in the deep-water that lay between this outer barrier reef and the island some three miles away—not two miles, as Miss Trevor had estimated the distance.
But, oh, that island! When Miss Trevor had spoken of it Leslie pictured to himself some tiny, obscure, bare atoll of perhaps a mile in length, and not more than a dozen feet high at its highest point—knowing from his reckoning that, at the time of the fatal outbreak, the brig had not been near enough any known land to render wreck upon it possible. But the land upon which he gazed with wondering eyes measured fully three miles from one extremity to the other—with a promise of considerably more beyond the points in sight. And instead of being only a few feet in height above the sea-level, it rose in a gentle slope for about half a mile from the beach of dazzlingly white sand that fringed its margin immediately opposite where the brig lay, and then towered aloft to a bare truncated peak that soared some six thousand feet into the beautifully clear air. The whole island, except some two hundred feet of its summit, appeared to be densely clad with vegetation, among which many noble trees were to be seen, some of them being resplendent with brilliant scarlet blossoms.