CHAPTER V.
ASHORE.
When Philip Garland again fully realized his situation he could hear, above the roar of distant thunder, a continuous rumbling noise. Although never having traveled on the sea very much, he understood that this dull booming was caused by the surf, and he thought that the supreme moment had come.
Then he heard a deafening crash, from what cause he knew not. It was as if a violent blow had been delivered full upon his head, and consciousness again deserted him.
On opening his eyes it seemed as though he had been awakened from a profound sleep. The sun beamed down from a blue, cloudless sky. He raised himself and saw the ocean at his feet, but it was as placid as a lake.
He was lying on the wet beach, hardly three feet from where the waves were rippling over the sand with a musical murmur, which afforded a vivid contrast to their wild shrieking of the previous night.
Looking around on every hand, not a vessel, boat or human face was to be seen. He was alone, so far as could be told from his limited range of vision, upon an uninhabited island.
The ill-fortune which began with the destruction of his establishment by Magog had surely spent itself in thus throwing him upon this tiny speck of land on the vast ocean, where, if any one should come, it would most likely be those more implacable than the elements.
Philip knew, through books and from conversations with the captain of the Swallow, that since passing through the Straits of Sunda they were in the immediate vicinity of pirates from Sooloo or Magindinao.
Even the less warlike natives of the Archipelago were to be feared, for he remembered at this moment better than ever before the writings of an old traveler, who says: