“I never seed a fog-bank with an edge like that,” observed old Bob, “an’ I’ve sailed the salt sea long enough to know.”
“Land it is, thank God,” said the captain earnestly, shutting up his telescope. “Get out the oars again, lads! We can’t make it before dark, but the sooner we get there the better, for landing on these coral islands isn’t always an easy job.”
The oars were got out at once, and the men pulled with a will, but it was late at night before they drew near to the land and heard the roar of the surf on the coral reef that stood as a sentinel to guard the island.
“Captain,” said Will Osten, “the wind has almost died away, yet it seems to me that the surf roars as violently as if a storm were raging.”
“That surf never goes down in those seas, doctor. Even in calm weather the swell of the big ocean gathers into a huge billow and bursts in foam upon the coral islands.”
“Surely, then,” said Will, “it must make landing both difficult and dangerous.”
“It is, sometimes, but not always,” replied the captain; “for a channel of safety has been provided, as you shall see, before long. Take the boat-hook, Goff, and look out in the bows.”
The man rose and stood up with the boat-hook ready to “fend off” if necessary.
A word or two here about the coral islands—those wonderful productions of the coral insect—may perhaps render the position of the boat and her subsequent proceedings more intelligible.
They are of all sizes and shapes. Some are small and low, like emeralds just rising out of the ocean, with a few cocoa-nut palms waving their tufted heads above the sandy soil. Others are many miles in extent, covered with large forest trees and rich vegetation. Some are inhabited, others are the abode only of sea-fowl. In many of them the natives are naked savages of the most depraved character. In a few, where the blessed gospel of Jesus Christ has been planted, the natives are to be seen, “clothed and in their right minds.” Wherever the gospel has taken root, commerce has naturally sprung up, and the evils that invariably follow in her train have in too many cases been attributed to Christianity. Poor indeed must be that man’s knowledge of the influence of Christianity, who would judge of its quality or value by the fruit of its professors. “By their fruits ye shall know them,” truly—them, but not Christianity. The world is an hospital, and life the period of convalescence. Christianity is the one grand and all-sufficient medicine. Shall we, the afflicted and jaundiced patients, still suffering from the virulence and effect of sin, condemn the medicine because it does not turn us out cured in a single day? Still, even to fruits we can appeal, mingled and confounded with crab-apples though they be.