“All right, sir,” answered Polson; “I’ll rouse ye out, never fear.”
The weather held fine all through that night, with the breeze light but steady at south; when, having been duly called by the boatswain at four o’clock the next morning, I turned out and went on deck, the ship, with her spars almost upright, was sliding very gently along over a sea so smooth that her mastheads seemed scarcely to sway at all among the brilliant stars that thickly jewelled the deep indigo vault overhead. The silence of night lay heavy upon the breast of the placid deep, and seemed to be emphasised rather than broken by the faint sigh of the breeze through the maze of spars and rigging that towered aloft, the soft seething and plash of water along the bends, the light creak or cheep of some parral or sheave up in the velvet darkness, and the occasional clank of the tiller chains as the watchful helmsman, with his eye upon some star peering past the weather leach of the main-royal, found it necessary to give the ship a spoke of the wheel one way or the other. The watch had stowed themselves away somewhere about the fore deck, doubtless taking a quiet catnap somewhere out of reach of the heavy dew, and were not to be seen; but the figure of the lookout on the topgallant forecastle could be just made out, momentarily eclipsing first one low-lying star and then another, as he paced monotonously to and fro athwartships to keep himself awake.
As I stood there at the head of the weather poop ladder, abstractedly watching this man’s movements, it suddenly struck me that there was one point upon the horizon, straight ahead, where the night gloom seemed to be the merest trifle deeper and more opaque than elsewhere, and I wondered whether it might perchance be the loom of the island, the highest point of which being, according to the chart, eight hundred and twenty feet above the sea level, should now be visible above the horizon if it were only daylight—and my reckoning happened to be correct. I fetched the ship’s night-glass and took a good look through it at this spot, but at first could make nothing certain of it. However, while I still looked, a bright star suddenly swam into view above the spot, and my heart gave a great leap, and a heavy sigh escaped me; for I knew, from the sweep of the horizon and the height of other stars about it in the immediate neighbourhood, that the celestial body which had so suddenly sprung into the field of the telescope must have just risen above the topmost ridge of something solid blotting out a small space of sky in that quarter; and the something solid could only be the island of Saint Paul.
“The island is in sight, Tudsbery, as straight ahead as it is possible for a man to aim for it!” I exclaimed exultantly; for my feeling of relief from doubt and anxiety, and the swift conviction that I might henceforward confidently rely upon myself, were so great that I felt impelled to give audible expression to my satisfaction.
“You don’t say so, Mr Troubridge!” exclaimed the carpenter, coming to my side. “Whereabouts do she lie, sir?”
“Come and stand where I am, and I will show you,” answered I. “There, now, do you see that bright star, low down in the sky, just over the spot where the cathead passes out through the bulwarks?”
“Certainly, sir; I see it quite plainly,” answered the carpenter.
“Then look immediately beneath it, and you will see the loom of the land,” said I. “You can make it out more clearly with the naked eye than through the telescope. D’ye see it?”
“Well,” exclaimed Chips doubtfully, “now that you comes to mention it, I admit that the gloom away down there do look a bit thicker than it do anywheres else; but I should never ha’ noticed it if you hadn’t drawed my attention to it. And, even now, I don’t know as I should care to swear as to it bein’ land.”
“No,” said I; “and neither should I, if I did not know it to be there. But wait until the day breaks, and you will see that I am right.”