Those left behind followed the canoe with their eyes as long as it was visible, and only returned to Rock Castle after they had watched it go out of Deliverance Bay.
Off Shark's Island Fritz manœuvred so as to get near the opposite shore. If a boat put off from the ship and rounded the extreme point, the canoe would have time to hide behind the reefs and remain on watch.
It took quite two hours to reach the cape, for the distance was more than five miles. With the breeze blowing from the north it would have been useless to set the little sail. It is true, the ebb tide had been favourable to the progress of the cockleshell of a boat.
This cape was about to be rounded for the first time since the Zermatt family had found refuge in Deliverance Bay. What a contrast it offered to False Hope Point, which was outlined ten miles away to the north-west! What an arid front this eastern part of New Switzerland presented! The coast, covered with sand dunes and bristling with black rocks, was set with reefs that stretched out several hundred fathoms beyond the promontory against which the ocean swell, even in fine weather, broke with never flagging violence.
When the canoe had rounded the furthest rocks, the eastern shore revealed itself before the eyes of Fritz and Jack. It ran almost due north to south, forming the boundary of New Switzerland on this side. Unless it was an island, therefore, it must be on the south that this land was joined to a continent.
The canoe skirted the coastline in such a way as to be indistinguishable from the rocks.
A couple of miles beyond, within a narrow bay, a vessel appeared, a three-master, with top-gallant-sails unstepped, undergoing repairs at this anchorage. Upon the neighbouring beach several tents were pitched.
The canoe approached within half-a-dozen cables' length of the vessel. The moment they were seen neither Fritz nor Jack could fail to apprehend the signs of friendship made to them from on board. They even heard a few sentences spoken in the English language, and it was clear that they were being taken for savages.
On their part they could be in no doubt as to the nationality of this vessel. The British flag was flying from the mizzen. She was an English corvette carrying ten guns.
Thus, there would have been no objection to opening communication with the captain of this corvette.