After three days passed between life and death, we perceived a point black as ink, standing out from the lurid sky on the horizon. The Malays, whose eyes have an infallible power of penetration, affirmed that it was land. We sped along with all the violence of a hurricane. The night having almost immediately supervened, we had not time to calculate if, when the light of day re-appeared, we should have reached or passed this wished-for land. And what a night it was for us, with neither sails, nor masts, nor rudder, with the wind blowing great guns, and the junk seeming as though it were splitting in pieces on every side!
CHAPTER II.
We are Shipwrecked.—I alone escape.—I find myself on an unknown island.—A strange form appears to me and vanishes.—A deluge of Apes.—I am cudgelled with a rattan cane.—Am saved at length by my cravat.—I am parched with thirst.—I discover water.—Four thousand of us drink in company.—Ingenious way of procuring fruit from the top of a tall tree.—Two valets-de-chambre, such as are seldom seen in Europe.—I miraculously escape their care.
At last the day broke, and we saw land only a quarter of a mile distant. But this quarter of a mile was only a chain of shoals white with foam from the sea incessantly breaking over them. It was inevitable that ere many minutes elapsed poor crazy junk would break itself as the sea was doing on the rocks, covered with foam and bearded with patches of slimy sea-weed, which lay direct in our course. We had no time to reflect on the fate which awaited us. Two sudden and frightful concussions, two blows of the heel, to use sailor’s language, shattered the ribs of the poor junk, whose poop at the same time was carried away by a terrible sea, and with it five of the crew. We scarcely heard the cries which they uttered as they disappeared in the watery abyss.
The other sailors at once sought to possess themselves of the only boat we had, in order, if possible, to reach the land. They had, however, no sooner commenced lowering it than a frightful struggle arose as to who should occupy it. It would scarcely have held more than half-a-dozen persons, and there were fifteen desperate men eager to fill it. Knives were drawn. A cutting of throats commenced; but the theatre of the struggle was about to disappear beneath the feet of conquerors and conquered alike.
Having kept clear of this desperate struggle for the possession of the boat, I caught sight at this moment of danger of one of those buoys fastened by a rope to the cable of the anchor, and which serves to mark the exact point where the anchor has been let go. I at once pull out my knife and cut the rope at a certain distance from the cable, and then seizing the buoy in both my arms, threw myself with it into the midst of the hissing waves. Engulfed an instant beneath the surge, on rising again to the surface, I turn my head to see what has become of my companions. They and the last remains of the junk have disappeared!