The Missing Merchantman

by Harry Collingwood

He now determined to follow the stream to its source, as his active mind already began to see that it might prove a very useful ally to them in many ways. The ravine-like character of the banks on either side of the stream still prevailed, and this, in conjunction with its winding course, continually opened up such vistas of sylvan beauty, that from time to time the wanderer involuntarily paused in admiration, and once or twice even caught himself asking the question whether, after all, a man might not do worse than spend the remainder of his life in the midst of such grandeur and beauty.

He now frequently encountered streams and brooks of more or less importance flowing down into the main stream on either side of the ravine, but they were scarcely sufficient in volume to account for the large quantity of water which now went dashing and foaming and sparkling over a bed of huge boulders. At length he came to the end of the ravine, and there he beheld a sight which amply rewarded him for all the labour which he had undergone in following the stream. The ravine terminated in a vertical wall of rock fully a thousand feet in height, from an immense fissure in which, near the top, there spouted a column of water which he estimated to be at least twelve feet in diameter. For fully a third of the distance this liquid column poured down unbroken, to be dashed into spray and mist—in which a rainbow softly beamed—upon an immense spike of rock which divided the flow into two nearly equal parts, and formed two superb cascades one on each side of the projecting rock.

At this point it was easy for an active man to cross the stream without wetting his feet, by jumping from boulder to boulder; and this the engineer did, for he saw that in order to reach the mountain he would have to get on the opposite side of the stream and follow its downward course for nearly a mile. When at length he climbed up the steep and lofty side of the ravine and reached its brow, the nearest spur of the mountain was only about a mile and a half distant, and for this he at once made. His route now lay over a flat table-land, out of which the mountain seemed to spring at once, and almost sheer. On reaching the base of the hill, however, its sides proved to be not quite so steep as they had appeared to be, but they were nevertheless steep enough to tax Gaunt’s muscles to their utmost extent before he finally reached the bald summit.

He had now spread around and beneath him a prospect of such surpassing beauty as he thought he had never gazed upon before. The sea bounded his horizon on every side, whilst the entire island lay spread out like a map beneath him, with all its bold undulations, its streams, the lake, and the arm of the sea distinctly visible; and with the aid of his telescope he was even able to discern the gleaming white canvas of the tent which marked the position of the little party he had left behind. Nay more, when he had finally adjusted the focus of his telescope, he was even able to detect, upon the white sand of the beach, two tiny moving objects which he knew to be his own boy Percy and little Lucille Henderson. For some time he was unable to withdraw his eyes from those two diminutive objects; but when he did so, and turned his face to the westward, he saw that the remarkable cliff which Ned had noticed as the ship passed the island, and which seemed to divide it into two separate and distinct portions, was distant not more than three-quarters of a mile from the base of the hill on which he stood. The top edge of this cliff bounded his view to the westward so far as the island was concerned; but the bay with its encircling reef was visible, and even with the naked eye he readily detected, on the interior edge of the reef, a small speck-like object which the telescope showed him to be the wreck mentioned by Ned in his note. The day was now wearing on apace, and his long walk had sharpened his appetite; Gaunt therefore thought that he could not do better than sit down where he was and take his luncheon or dinner whilst he noted in fuller detail the topography of the island, of which he there and then made a rough sketch-plan.

His meal over, the solitary explorer descended the mountain and made his way to the edge of the cliff. Arrived there, it soon become apparent that the most difficult portion of his journey still lay before him, for at the point where he then stood, he saw at once that to descend the cliffs face to the slope below would be an impossibility without the aid of ropes or some substitute for them. He turned south and followed the edge of the cliff, hoping to find a spot at which he might descend, but without success, as he at length reached a point where the face of the cliff turned sharply off to the eastward, eventually running into and forming a portion of the cliff proper, which on that side of the island ran sheer down to the water.

Retracing his steps, Gaunt soon found himself back at the spot where he had in the first instance reached the edge of the cliff, and passing on he found, at a distance of about a quarter of a mile beyond, a narrow chasm or gap, which on careful inspection he saw would enable him to descend to the sloping green-sward at the foot of the cliff. Down this gap he cautiously scrambled, narrowly escaping an awkward fall once or twice on his way, and by that means soon reached the foot of the cliff, which appeared to maintain a tolerably uniform height of about three hundred and fifty feet.

From the point where he now stood the ground sloped pretty evenly down to the water, the inclination of the slope being about one foot in every three; and the distance to the water’s-edge a mile, as near as might be. The base of this long slope terminated in a narrow strip of sandy beach, which was strewed here and there with timber and what-not from the wreck in the offing. This wreck Mr Gaunt was exceedingly anxious to visit, as he felt it might—and probably would—prove of inestimable value to himself and his companions. She was not more than half a mile distant from the beach, and was lying close to the inside fringe of the white water which broke over the outlying reef. Her bows pointed shoreward, but at an angle which enabled the engineer to catch a glimpse of her entire broadside; and she was lying well over on her side, with her inclined deck towards the island, thus enabling Gaunt to get, with the aid of his telescope, a fairly good view of her, and to form a tolerably accurate estimate of the amount of damage which she had received. She was a large vessel, measuring, as near as he could judge, some sixteen hundred tons, and she appeared to be built of wood. She had been either barque or ship-rigged; but all three of her masts were over the side, and could be seen floating there still attached to the hull by the rigging. Her bulwarks were entirely swept away, as also were her deck-houses—the broken stanchions of which Gaunt thought he could detect still projecting above the surface of the deck. The stem and stern-posts of a couple of boats still dangled from her davits; which seemed to point to the conclusion that when disaster overtook her the crew had been allowed little or no time in which to provide for their safety.

Gaunt was an excellent swimmer, and, having no boat, he thought his quickest mode of reaching the vessel would be by taking to the water. He was on the point of stripping for this purpose when, his eye still fixed upon the ship, he caught a glimpse of two or three small dark objects projecting above the surface of the water and moving slowly about. He had a very shrewd suspicion as to the nature of these objects, and his telescope soon demonstrated to him the fact that he was right in believing them to be the dorsal fins of so many sharks.

He was scarcely prepared for this discovery, as he was under the impression that the bay on the shore of which he stood was completely hemmed in by the reef; and he was fully aware that if such had been the case the smooth water inside would be quite free from sharks, as these pests never voluntarily pass through broken water. Their presence, therefore, pointed to the probability that although he had been unable to detect such a circumstance, there must somewhere be a channel through the reef.

The sight of the sharks effectually put an end to his project of swimming off to the wreck, and he at once began to look about him for the means of forming such a raft as would enable him to make the trip in safety. There was plenty of timber lying strewed about the beach, but he had no nails or tools of any description, except his axe, with which to construct the raft. Under these circumstances the matter required a little thinking out; and whilst deliberating upon his best mode of proceeding, he sauntered along the beach on the look-out for suitable materials. He had been walking slowly along for a distance of about a mile when his quick eye detected certain objects lying on the sand which he instinctively divined to be human corpses, and, making his way to them, he found he was not mistaken. There they lay—seven of them—just as they had been washed ashore, dead, after their last ineffectual struggle with the merciless sea. Three of them were fully clothed; the remaining four were clad only in their shirts, which seemed to indicate that they had leaped from their hammocks, upon some sudden alarm, and rushed upon the deck, to be almost immediately swept overboard. The bodies were in a most revolting condition, from the combined effects of the sun and the attacks of the sea-birds and land-crabs, the latter of which swarmed upon the beach in thousands. It was difficult to judge accurately how long a period had elapsed since death had overtaken these unfortunates; but from their appearance Gaunt believed that it could not have been many weeks. It was a sad sight to look upon, especially for a man in his situation; and he hastened to remove it by roughly sharpening a fragment of plank with his axe and scooping shallow graves in the sand, into which he rolled the bodies and hastily covered them up.