“Maybe not land,—I mean the terra firma,” pursued the observer, in a less confident tone. “It may be only the top of a thick forest like what we tried to penetrate yesterday. Whatever it is, patron, it seems along the whole edge of the sky. We are drifting towards it, straight as the wind can carry us.”
“Thank God!” exclaimed Trevannion, “anything is better than this. If we can get once more among the tree-tops, we shall at least be saved from drowning. Thank God, children. We shall be preserved!”
The Indian descended from the mast, close followed by the monkey, whose serio-comic countenance seemed to say that he too was satisfied by the observation just made. Still careering madly onward before the tempest, the boat soon brought the tree-tops within view, and, after a brief debate, the conclusion was reached that it was only a submerged forest. But even this was better than buffeting about on the open billows,—every moment in danger of being swamped; and with a universal feeling of joy our adventurers perceived that their craft was drifting toward that dark line. They were powerless to control her course. Her rudder had been unshipped during the night, and they could trust only to the tempest still raging to carry them to the confines of the forest. In full hope that this would be the result, they took no measures either to promote or frustrate the steering of the storm.
Chapter Eleven.
The Galatea Treed.
Tossed by the tempest, the galatea preserved her course towards the tree-tops, thus keeping up the spirits and confidence of her crew. Despite some divergences caused by an occasional contrary gust of wind, she kept an onward course, in due time arriving within such distance of the forest, that it was no longer doubtful about her drifting among the trees. In this there was a prospect of temporary safety at the least, and our adventurers had begun to congratulate themselves on the proximity of the event. Just then, a gigantic tree—it must have been gigantic to stand so high over its fellows, though it could scarce be fifty feet above the surface of the water—presented itself to their eyes. It stood solitary and alone, about a quarter of a mile from the edge of the forest, and as much nearer to the craft, still struggling through the wind-lashed water. Like that in the top of which they had first gone aground, it was a sapucaya,—as testified by the huge pericarps conspicuously suspended from its branches. High as may have been the inundation, its stem rose still higher, by at least ten feet; but half-way between the water’s surface and the branches, the colossal trunk forked in twain,—each of the twin scions appearing a trunk of itself. Through the fork was the water washing at each heave of the agitated Gapo,—the waves with foaming crests mounting far up towards the top of the tree, as if aspiring to pluck the ripe fruit depending from its branches.
Towards this tree the galatea was now going as straight as if she had been steered by the finger of Destiny itself. There was no other power to control her,—at least none that was human. The wind, or destiny,—one of the two,—must determine her fate. The waves perhaps had something to do with it; since the next that followed lifted the galatea upon its curling crest, and lodged her in the sapucaya in such a fashion that her keel, just amidships, rested within the forking of the twin stems.