“Wilde don’t know nothin’ about a ship, Mr Troubridge—how should he?” explained Polson to me; “and if he was let to have his way he might start pullin’ of her to pieces for the sake of her timber and metal.”
“As likely as not he would,” said I. “But you men must never permit that, Polson; at least, not for some time to come. There are a dozen ways in which she may yet be found eminently useful. For instance, beautiful and altogether suitable as this island appears for your purpose, who is to say that it does not possess some subtle peculiarity of climate rendering it unfit for the abode of Europeans; and what sort of condition would you be in if such should prove to be the case, and you had no ship to which to retreat, and in which to seek another island?”
“Very true, sir,” cut in the carpenter. “I hadn’t thought of that; but there’s the chance of it, all the same, now that you comes to mention it.”
As a matter of fact, however, it was not the above reason that influenced me in the least in my desire to ensure the preservation of the ship, for, although I had mentioned it, I did not for a moment believe that the contingency would ever arise; but, like Grace Hartley and Gurney, I had long since subjected Wilde’s theories to careful examination, and decided that there was nothing in them to satisfy a man possessed of a healthy ambition to make his mark in the world; I therefore wanted to keep open for myself a way of escape; and no better way could possibly be afforded than by the ship.
By one bell in the forenoon watch—half-past eight—breakfast was over and everybody was once more on deck and clustering about the gangways, waiting for the boats to be brought alongside. This was soon done, every boat belonging to the ship having been got into the water and veered astern the first thing that morning. But now another delay occurred, most vexatious to the impatient emigrants; for every one of the boats—excepting the quarter boats, which had been kept tight by filling them about a quarter full of water every morning—proved so leaky, their seams having opened through long exposure to the air, that they had quietly swamped in the interval between six o’clock and breakfast-time. The swamping process, however, had not occupied more than a quarter of an hour, since which time the submerged boats had been rapidly “taking up”; therefore when, soon afterward, they were baled out, it was found that they had already become tight enough to make the short passage to the shore; and by ten o’clock the ship was empty, save for Polson and two seamen who had been included in the exploring party of the previous day, and who were now willing to remain aboard and look after her.
I went ashore in the last boat to leave the ship; and, upon stepping ashore, at once set my face toward the peak, with the intention of ascending it. The nearer slopes ahead of me were thickly dotted with people in little groups, parents and children, or friends, who were bent upon seeing something of the island, certainly, but whose chief aim was an enjoyable picnic. The children were already, for the most part, busily engaged in plucking the many strange and beautiful flowers with which the greensward was thickly dotted; while the parents, eager to sample the various fruits which the island yielded, vainly strove to quicken the youngsters’ pace. There were a few solitary couples straying off by themselves; and among them I presently recognised Gurney and Grace Hartley. Wilde, acting as cicerone to a large party who were evidently anxious to see as much as possible of the island forthwith, was already a long way ahead.
The greensward, which came right down to the beach of coarse coral grit, rose undulatingly at a very gentle slope until within about three-quarters of a mile from the summit of the peak, when the slope became considerably steeper—probably a rise of one in five—to within a couple of hundred feet of the summit, when the slope took an angle of about forty-five degrees. But it must not be imagined that the very gentle slope of which I have spoken was uniform, for it was far from that; on the contrary, I had not advanced much more than half a mile on my way before I came to, first, a slight dip, then a rather stiff rise of a few hundred yards to a kind of ridge, upon surmounting which I found myself upon the edge of a wildly picturesque glen, or ravine, the steep sides of which consisted of finely broken ground interspersed with outcrops of lichen—stained rock and thickly overgrown with a tangle of bushes and flowering shrubs, with here and there a few graceful saplings or a clump of noble shade trees entwined with strange-looking and beautiful orchids. The cool, refreshing, musical sound of running water came up from the depths of the glen, although the stream itself was not visible from where I stood, while the subdued roar of a distant waterfall strongly tempted me to swerve from my path and follow the upward course of the glen. I surrendered myself to the temptation, rather erroneously arguing that every foot of rise must necessarily take me so much nearer the summit of the peak, whereas I eventually found that I had diverged almost at right angles to my proper course. But I was richly rewarded for my labour and loss of time, for at the end of a somewhat arduous climb of about twenty minutes I found myself gazing at as romantic and beautiful a bit of scenery as I had ever beheld.
I was in a deep hollow between two hills, the bottom of the hollow forming a rocky basin into which poured the water of a small stream, some ten feet in width, as it tumbled over a broad, rocky ledge some sixty feet above, and came foaming, lace-like, down the moss-grown face of the precipice. The pool, or basin, into which the water fell was some thirty feet in diameter, and apparently about four feet deep, the pebbly bottom showing with startling distinctness through the crystal-clear water. The steep sides of the hollow were grass-grown, with great, rough outcrops of granite rock showing here and there, out of the interstices of which sprang a great variety of beautiful ferns, and were overhung by a magnificent tangle of beautiful trees and bushes growing so thickly together as completely to exclude the sun’s rays, bathing the whole scene in a soft, cool, delicious green twilight.
The water looked so clear, so cool, so altogether tempting, that I decided there and then to treat myself to the luxury of a freshwater bath; I accordingly stripped and sprang in, fully expecting to touch bottom. But, to my astonishment, the pool proved to be fully ten feet deep; moreover the water was icy cold, or appeared to be so in comparison with the tropical heat of the air; I therefore scrambled out as quickly as possible, and, dressing, resumed my ramble, greatly refreshed by my dip.
The hot air was heavy with the smell of wet earth, the spray of the waterfall, the rank vegetation that flourished riotously along the margins of the brook, and the mingled perfumes of a thousand varieties of strange and gorgeously tinted flowers, as I laboriously climbed the steep side of the ravine, after crossing the brook, on my way to the more open country beyond. But this soon changed upon my emerging from the ravine, giving place to the more healthful and invigorating scent of the salt sea breeze that came sweeping over the island and roared among the lofty branches of the trees, among the trunks of which I now wound my upward way.