As Jenny could not travel on a troopship, Colonel Montrose put her, with a maid to attend her, in the charge of a friend of his, Captain Greenfield, commander of the Dorcas. This ship sailed a few days before the one which was to take the colonel.
The voyage was ill-starred from the very first. On leaving the Bay of Bengal the Dorcas encountered storms of fearful violence; later she was chased by a French frigate, and compelled to seek refuge in the harbour of Batavia.
When the enemy had left these waters, the Dorcas set sail once more, and steered her course for the Cape of Good Hope. Her passage was a most difficult one at this stormy season. Contrary winds continued to blow with astonishing persistence. The Dorcas was put out of her course by a storm which swept up from the south-west. For an entire week Captain Greenfield was unable to take his bearings. In fact he could not have told whereabouts in the Indian Ocean he had been carried by the storm, when during the night his ship struck a reef.
An unknown coast rose some little distance off and the crew, jumping into the first boat, made an attempt to reach it. Jenny Montrose, with her maid and a few passengers, got into the second boat. The ship was breaking up already, and had to be abandoned as speedily as possible.
Half an hour later the second boat was capsized by a huge wave just as the first boat was disappearing in the darkness.
When Jenny recovered consciousness she found herself upon a beach where the surf had laid her, probably the sole survivor of the wreck of the Dorcas.
The girl did not know what length of time had elapsed since the boat was swamped. It was almost a miracle that she had strength enough left to drag herself into a cave, where, after she had eaten a few eggs, she found a little rest in sleep.
When she awoke she dried in the sun the man's clothes which she had put on at the time the ship struck, in order to be less hampered in her movements, and in one of the pockets of which there was a tinder-box which would enable her to make a fire.
Jenny walked all along the shore of the island but could not see any of her shipmates. There was nothing but fragments of the ship, a few pieces of wood from which she used to keep up her fire.
But, so great was the physical and moral strength of this young girl, so potent was the influence of her almost masculine education, that despair never took hold of her. She set her home within the cave in order. A few nails taken from the wreckage of the Dorcas were her only tools. Clever with her fingers, and of an inventive mind, she contrived the few things that were absolutely necessary. She succeeded in making a bow and fastening a few arrows, with which to hunt the furred and feathered game, and so provide for her daily food. There were a few animals which she was able to tame, a jackal and a cormorant, for instance, and these never left her side.