The Castaways

by Harry Collingwood

Chapter Eleven.

The island.

Standing on as we were going, we ratched past the island until it was left a couple of miles astern of us, when we tacked ship, and brought the land on our lee beam. Then, steering full and by, half an hour’s sailing sufficed to bring the summit of the hill to the required compass-bearing of south-east, half-south, whereupon we bore dead away for it, and, leaving O’Gorman in charge of the deck, I sprang into the fore rigging and mounted to the crosstrees, from which commanding elevation I intended to con the brig to her anchorage. Miss Onslow was on deck by this time, drinking in, with eager, flashing eyes, the beauty and brilliant colour of the picture presented by the emerald island in its setting of sapphire sea; but as I sprang into the rigging I noticed that her gaze followed me; and when I swung myself out to clamber over the rim of the top—a performance which, to the eye of the landsman, appears distinctly hazardous—she suddenly clasped her hands upon her breast, as though in terror for my safety. The action was trifling enough, perhaps, yet I was disposed to regard it as not quite insignificant, since I had often stood by her side as she had watched—with evidently no stronger emotion than amusement—others perform the same feat.

Upon reaching my perch I found that we were still in deep water, no sign whatever of the bottom being visible through the depths of the exquisitely beautiful, clear, crystalline blue; but ahead, at the very fringe of the breakers that were dashing themselves into diamond and pearl-white spray upon the stubborn rampart of the barrier reef, there was a change of colour that told of shoaling depths; and a qualm of anxiety swept over me as I pictured to myself what would probably happen if, sweeping in before the wind as we were, we should plunge into that belt of seething white water, and find that there was not depth enough to float us. For a few minutes I was full of anxiety; but presently, as we slid nearer and nearer still to the reef, I detected the opening—a narrow passage barely wide enough, apparently, for a boat to traverse, but of unbroken water, merely flecked here and there with the froth of the boil on either hand. We were running as straight for it as though it had been in sight for an hour; and as we were following the directions given in O’Gorman’s paper, this fact seemed to point to an accurate knowledge of the place on the part of the author of those directions; which assumption I fervently hoped would be confirmed in every particular.

As we bore rapidly down upon the reef, the passage through it gradually assumed its true proportion of width, and I saw that there was ample room to allow of the passage, not only of the brig, but of a couple of line-of-battle ships abreast. The island had the appearance of being simply the topmost ridge of a mountain rising with a tolerably even continuous slope from the bottom of the sea; and the barrier reef was merely an excrescence or wall of coral built on to one side of it, and founded at a depth of ten fathoms below the surface of the ocean, as our lead presently told us. The basin thus formed had, during the course of ages, become partially filled with sand, forming a beautifully smooth, and even white floor, gradually sloping upward toward the surface from the reef to the shore of the island. All this was quite plain to me as we drove in through the break in the long, sweeping circle of foam; and, once in still water, I was able from my perch to see the sandy bottom as clearly as though it had been bare of water, every tiny fish and every fragment of weed that passed within a hundred feet of us being perfectly visible.

Once fairly through the opening in the reef and into the basin, we hauled up to south a quarter west, which course brought our jib-boom pointing to what then had the appearance of the mouth of an insignificant stream. But as we slid athwart the basin the opening assumed an appearance of increasingly greater importance, until when within half a mile of it I saw that it was really the comparatively narrow entrance of a fairly spacious little bay, or loch, penetrating for some distance into the land. Soon afterwards the big rock mentioned in O’Gorman’s document separated itself from the background of bush and trees with which it had hitherto been merged, and proclaimed itself as an obelisk-like monolith of basalt rearing its apex to a height of some ninety feet above the water level. When fairly abreast of this the canvas was clewed up, and the brig slid into the loch with the way that she had on her. This loch, or channel, wound gradually round for a length of about a cable, and then widened into a nearly circular lagoon about half a mile in diameter, in the very centre of which stood a small islet, thickly overgrown with trees and dense jungle. Keeping this islet on our starboard beam, at a distance of some twenty fathoms, we slowly circled round it until it was immediately between us and the outlet to the larger lagoon, when we let go our anchor in four fathoms, amid the exultant cheers of the men, who thus found themselves triumphantly at their destination. That we actually had found the identical island referred to in O’Gorman’s paper there could be no shadow of doubt, since the landmarks mentioned agreed perfectly; and my strongest emotion was one of surprise that an island of such dimensions should thus far have escaped the notice of the hydrographers.

All hands now went to breakfast; and when the men again turned to, upon the conclusion of their meal, their first act was to swarm aloft and unbend the whole of the canvas, from the royals down—a proceeding which seemed to confirm my previous surmise that they intended their sojourn upon the island to be of some duration. This task occupied them the entire morning; but when they knocked off at eight bells for dinner, the brig’s spars and stays were entirely denuded of their canvas. The Irishman had some little difficulty in persuading his satellites to go to work again after dinner, there being a very evident tendency on the part of all hands to take matters easily now, after their long spell at sea; but he eventually got them out from the shadow of the bulwarks and upon their feet again, when the boats were all lowered, the entire stock of the brig’s sails, new and old, struck into them, the spare booms launched overboard and towed ashore; and the remainder of the day was spent in erecting tents upon a small open patch of grass, upon the mainland—if I may so call it—that happened to be immediately abreast the brig. Miss Onslow and myself were thus left alone together on board, nobody seeming to take either of us into consideration in the making of their arrangements. There were arguments both in favour of and against this arrangement; for instance, our cabins aboard the brig were unpleasantly hot and stuffy in the parallels that we had now reached, and I had no doubt that we should have found sleeping ashore in a nice, airy tent very much more comfortable; but on the other hand, if we were to be allowed to occupy the brig we should at least be by ourselves, and the risk of nocturnal intrusion would be very much less; I was therefore disposed to consider that, on the whole, matters were more satisfactory as they were. Yet it went against the grain with me that we should be so completely ignored, and our comfort and convenience so completely neglected, by a crowd of graceless, unmannerly louts, and I was casting about for some means whereby I could compel at least a reasonable measure of consideration from them, when fortune unexpectedly intervened to help me. It happened in this wise.

After conveying ashore the sails and spars, and erecting the tents, the men came off to the brig again, and took ashore their chests and belongings generally, together with an abundant supply of food, and a still more abundant supply of liquor, with the natural result that a regular drunken orgy occurred that night, of such a character as to compel my gratitude that Miss Onslow was not an occupant of any portion of that camp. As it was, I deemed it only prudent to maintain a watch until the riot ashore had ceased, and the rioters had safely subsided into a drunken slumber. But my companion and I had to prepare our evening meal for ourselves, that night, or we should have gone supperless to our cabins. And, in like manner, we also had to prepare our own breakfast next morning.

That simple meal was over some considerable time before there was any stir or sign of movement in the camp on shore; but at length the cook appeared, still, apparently, in a semi-drunken condition, and by and by we saw the men sitting down to breakfast. They occupied an unconscionably long time over their meal, and when it was over most of the party lit their pipes and staggered away back into the sheltering shade of their tents again. There were two or three exceptions, one of whom was O’Gorman, who, after lighting his pipe, strolled down to the water’s edge with a paper in his hand that looked very much like the paper from which he had quoted the instructions for making the island, and which he appeared to be studying most intently, with a dubious air that, even as I watched him, rapidly changed into one of steadily-increasing perplexity.