They looked at the spot to which Martin pointed, and there saw a human skeleton in the last stage of decay, with a large pearl shell under the skull. Not far-off more human bones were discovered.
“That’s proof positive,” said Brown. “Now, I wonder why these natives came here, and why they went away.”
“P’r’aps they didn’t come, but was born’d here,” suggested Martin; “an’ mayhap they didn’t go away at all, but died here.”
“True, Martin,” said Adams; “and that shell reminds me of what Captain Bligh once told me, that the natives o’ the Gambier Islands, which must lie to wind’ard o’ this, have a custom of puttin’ a shell under the heads of the dead in this fashion. Moreover, he told me that these same Gambier chaps, long ago, used to put the people they vanquished in war on rafts, and turn ’em adrift to sink or swim, or fetch what land they might. No doubt some of these people got drifted here.”
As he spoke the party emerged from a somewhat rugged pass, close to the highest peak of the mountain-ranges. A few minutes’ scramble brought them to the summit, whence they obtained a magnificent view of the entire circuit of the island.
We have said that the peak is just over a thousand feet high. From this commanding position the Pacific was seen with a boundless horizon all round. Not a speck of land visible save the rocky isle on which they stood. Not a sail to mark the vast expanse of water, which, from that height, seemed perfectly flat and smooth, though a steady breeze was blowing, and the islet was fringed with a pure white ring of foam. Not a cloud even to break the monotony of the clear sky, and no sound to disturb the stillness of nature save the plaintive cries, mellowed by distance, of the myriads of sea-fowl which sailed round the cliffs, or dipped into the water far below.
“Solitude profound,” said Christian, in a low voice, breaking the silence which had fallen on the party as they gazed slowly round them.
Just then a loud and hideous yell issued from, apparently; the bowels of the earth, and rudely put to flight the feeling of profound solitude. The cry, although very loud, had a strangely muffled sound, and was repeated as if by an echo.
The explorers looked in each other’s faces inquiringly, and not without an expression of awe.
“Strange,” said Adams; “an’ it sounded very like some one in distress.”