The position in which the trio found themselves next morning, when daylight revealed it, was, we might almost say, tremendously romantic.
The ledge on which they had passed the night was much narrower than they had supposed it to be, and their beds, if we may so call them, had been dangerously near to the edge of a frightful precipice which descended sheer down to a strip of sand that looked like a yellow thread two hundred feet below. The cliff behind them rose almost perpendicularly another hundred feet or more, and the narrow path or gully by which they had gained their eyrie was so steep and rugged that their reaching the spot at all in safety seemed little short of a miracle. The sun was brightening with its first beams an absolutely tranquil sea when the sleepers opened their eyes, and beheld what seemed to them a great universe of liquid light. Their ears at the same time drank in the soft sound of murmuring ripples far below, and the occasional cry of sportive sea-birds.
“Grand! glorious!” exclaimed Trench, as he sat up and gazed with enthusiasm on the scene.
Paul did not speak. His thoughts were too deep for utterance, but his mind reverted irresistibly to some of the verses in that manuscript Gospel which he carried so carefully in his bosom.
As for Oliver, his flushed young face and glittering eyes told their own tale. At first he felt inclined to shout for joy, but his feelings choked him; so he, too, remained speechless. The silence was broken at last by a commonplace remark from Paul, as he pointed to the horizon—“The home of our shipmates is further off than I thought it was.”
“The rascals!” exclaimed the captain, thinking of the shipmates, not of the home; “the place is too good for ’em.”
“But all of them are not equally bad,” suggested Paul gently.
“Humph!” replied Trench, for kind and good-natured though he was he always found it difficult to restrain his indignation at anything that savoured of injustice. In occasionally giving way to this temper, he failed to perceive at first that he was himself sometimes guilty of injustice. It is only fair to add, however, that in his cooler moments our captain freely condemned himself.
“‘Humph!’ is a very expressive word,” observed Paul, “and in some sense satisfactory to those who utter it, but it is ambiguous. Do you mean to deny, Master Trench, that some of your late crew were very good fellows? and don’t you admit that Little Stubbs and Squill and Grummidge were first-rate specimens of—”
“I don’t admit or deny anything!” said the captain, rising, with a light laugh, “and I have no intention of engaging in a controversy with you before breakfast. Come, Olly, blow up the fire, and go to work with your pork and cakes. I’ll fetch some more wood, and Paul will help me, no doubt.”