Slowly the grey dawn stole in, and the mist that enveloped the land melted away; and, to make my story brief, we found by degrees that seventeen of the ship's company, including Joe Rudderford and our two selves, had survived the catastrophe, and that we were shipwrecked on the Crozets—those horrible isles that lie in the Southern Pacific, out of the track of all vessels!
We could scarcely congratulate ourselves upon our escape, and some there were among us who bitterly regretted that they had not perished with the rest.
Out of the fore-part of the wreck we contrived to get some tins of preserved meat and a cask of gunpowder, after which she heeled over into deep water and disappeared; and a sigh escaped my lips as we saw the last of our floating home—the good old Bon Accord.
No island in the world could be more desolate than the one on which we found ourselves. Lashed by tempests, and surrounded by an ever-boiling sea, never visited save by some adventurous whaler, that solitary archipelago, the Crozets, does not possess one human being!
Under Joe Rudderford, to whom we all turned now, we began the dreary work of exploration, and found that we were on a long, gaunt, and naked isle a few miles in extent, without trees or verdure, and exposed to surf and the bitter blasts of the Southern Arctic winter.
Our boats had all been swamped or dashed to pieces, so that we had no chance or means of crossing to any of the larger islands which were visible, and on this miserable reef we must remain and exist as best we might.
Joe discovered a spring of pure water. 'Thus,' said he, 'we are sure of the one great necessity of life.'
Of food we had certainly one great source—the sea-birds frequenting the spot. An incredible number of albatrosses, frigate-birds, and gulls were resident on the isle; their eggs were found everywhere, and they and their young, being all unused to man, became an easy prey, as we could capture them by the hand or knock them over by a stick.
'Thank Heaven,' said Joe, 'we have food and drink provided, and it will go hard if our self-help and sagacity as British sailors don't do the rest for us.'
Everything that was cast in from the wreck was carefully brought on shore and stored up. By Joe's orders, we placed a spare topmast on an eminence, with a blanket, as a flag, attached thereto, and a regular watch was told off beside it, to signal any passing vessel. Rude shelters of stones were set up for weak or ailing men among us; Joe divided us into messes, and made arrangements for the distribution of the birds, the eggs, and all else that was in our general stock.