“We'll wait a bit till it's a little clearer, and then we'll run in over the reef just abreast of us,” said Hendry; “it's about high water, and as there is no surf we can cross over into the lagoon without any trouble, and pick out a camping-place somewhere on the inner beach.”
They lowered the sail and mast, took out their oars, and waited till they could see clearly before them. A few minutes later they were pulling over the reef, on which there was no break, and in another half a mile they reached the shore of the most northern of the chain of islets encompassing the lagoon, and made the boat's painter fast to the serried roots of a pandanus palm growing at the edge of the water.
Then they sought rest and shelter from the next downpour beneath the overhanging summits of some huge, creeper-clad boulders of coral rock, which lay piled together in the midst of the dense scrub, just beyond high-water mark.
Bringing their arms and some provisions from the boat, they placed them on the dry sandy soil under one of the boulders, ate their breakfast, and then slept the sleep of men mentally and physically exhausted.
When they awoke the rain had cleared off, and the sun was shining brightly. By the captain's watch it was a little past one o'clock, and after looking at the boat, which was high and dry on the beach; for the tide was now dead low, Chard suggested that they should make a brief examination of the islet, and get come young drinking and some fully-grown coconuts for use in the boat.
“Very likely we'll find some turtle eggs too,” he added; “this and next month is the season. We are bound to get a turtle or two, anyway, if we watch to-night on the beach.”
Returning to the camp, they picked up their loaded Winchesters and started off, walking along the beach on the inner side of the lagoon, and going in a northerly direction. The islet, although less than a mile and a half in circumference, was densely wooded and highly fertile, for in addition to the countless coco-palms which were laden with nuts in all stages of growth, and fringed the shore in an unbroken circle, there were great numbers of pandanus and jackfruit-trees growing further back. Here and there were to be seen traces of former inhabitants—depressions of an acre or so in extent, surrounded by high banks of soil, now thickly clothed with verdure, and which Chard, who had had a fair experience of the South Seas, knew were once plantations of puraka, the gigantic taro plant of the low-lying islands of the South and North Pacific.
“It must be a hundred years or more since any one worked at these puraka patches,” he said to Hendry, as he sat upon the top of a bank and looked down. “Look at the big trees growing all around us on the banks. There can't be natives living anywhere on the atoll now, so I don't think we need to keep a night watch as long as we stop here.”
But had Harvey Carr or any one of the native crew sat there on the bank, they would have quickly discovered many evidences of the spot having been visited very recently—the broken branch of a tree, a leaf basket lying flattened and rotting, and half covered by the sandy soil; a necklace of withered berries thrown aside by a native girl, and the crinkled and yellowed husks of some young coconuts which had been drunk not many weeks before by a fishing party.
At the extreme northern point of the islet there stood a mound of coral slab, piled up by the action of the sea, and similar to the much larger one fifteen miles away at the other end of the lagoon. With some difficulty the two men succeeded in gaining the summit, and from there, at a height of fifty feet, they had a view of the greater portion of the atoll, and of some of the green chain of islands it enclosed. On no one of them could they discern signs of human occupancy, only long, long lines of cocos, with graceful slender boles leaning westward to the sea, and whose waving crowns of plumes cast their shadows upon the white sand beneath. From the beach itself to the barrier reef, a mile or two away, the water was a clear, pale green, unblemished in its purity except by an occasional patch of growing coral, which changed its colours from grey to purple and from purple to jetty black as a passing cloud for a brief space dimmed the lustre of the tropic sun. Beyond the line of green the great curving sweep of reef, with the snow-white, ever-breaking, murmuring surf churning and frothing upon it; and, just beyond that, the deep, deep blue of the Pacific.