As wild, desolate, and dreary a spot it was as ever anchorite imagined or poet pictured; such, at all events, we all thought on looking at it and realising the providential way in which our safety had been effected.
It happened in this wise.
There were one or two breaks in the reef surrounding this desert isle, as we could see from a link missing here and there in the chain of breakers. This was especially noticeable towards the south-western portion of the rampart the indefatigable coral insect had thrown up, where an opening about double the width of the Silver Queen’s beam was plainly discernible. Through this fissure in the reef, piloted by that power which had watched over us throughout all the perils of our voyage, the ship had been driven; and she had beached herself gradually on the shore of the little island, as her way was eased by the placid lagoon into which she entered from the troubled sea without the natural breakwater. Here she was now fixed hard and fast forward, with her forefoot high and dry, although there was deep water under her stern aft.
“Thank God for his mercy!” exclaimed Mr Mackay fervently; and I’m sure I echoed this recognition of the loving care that had so wonderfully preserved us. “We couldn’t have got in here without striking on the reef, if we had seen the entrance before our eyes and tried our very best; not, at all events, with that gale shoving us on and in such a sea as is running—only look at it now!”
“Oh, aye,” agreed Captain Gillespie, gazing out as we all did at the creamy line of foaming breakers all round, that sent showers of surfy spray over the coral ledge into the placid lagoon, which was calm and still in comparison, like a mountain tarn, albeit filled with brackish sea-water all the same. “Oh, aye, it’s wonderful enough our getting here; but how are we going to get out—eh?”
“No doubt we’ll find a way,” said the other, who had bared his head when giving thanksgiving where it was due; and whose noble, intelligent face, I thought, as I looked at him admiringly, seemed capable of anything, he spoke so cheerfully, his courage not daunted but increased, it seemed, all the more by what had happened—“No doubt we’ll find a way, sir.”
But “Old Jock” wouldn’t be comforted.
Obstinately insisting before, against Mr Mackays advice, that we were going on all right, he was even more dogmatically certain now that we were all wrong; saying that, as far as he could see, the ship and her cargo and every one of the thirty-one souls she had on board were doomed!
“I can’t see how it’s going to be managed, Mackay,” he replied despondingly to the other’s cheery words, even his nose drooping with dismay at the prospect, superstition coming to aid his despairing conviction. “I knew there was something uncanny when those pigs jumped overboard that evening, and I told you so, if you recollect, Saunders; and you know, when I say a thing, I mean a thing.”
“Aye, aye,” said the second mate, thus appealed to; and who being a shallow-pated man with little feeling for anything save the indulgence of his appetite, thought there was some connection, now the captain put it so, between the loss of the porkers and the ship’s being castaway, he not having been let into the secret of the reason for the strange behaviour of the pigs on the occasion referred to. “Aye, aye, cap’en, I remember your saying so quite well.”