“What is this?” exclaimed Browne, in a voice of horror. “I should think, if I believed such things permitted, that evil spirits had power here on the lonely sea, and were sporting with our misery.”
“It is a mirage,” said Arthur quietly, “as I suspected from the first. But courage! though what we have seen was an optical illusion, there must be a real island in the distance beyond, of which this was the elevated and refracted image. It cannot, I think, be more than thirty or forty miles off, and the current is sweeping us steadily towards it.”
“I suppose then,” said Morton, “that we can do nothing better, than to trust ourselves entirely to this current which must in fact be a pretty powerful one—at least as rapid as the Gulf Stream.”
“We can do nothing better until the wind changes,” replied Arthur, cheerfully; “at present I am disposed to think we are doing very well, and fast approaching land.”
But there was no change of the wind, and we continued hour after hour, apparently making no progress, but in reality, as we believed, drifting steadily westward. All through the day we maintained a vigilant watch, lest by any possibility we should miss sight of the island which Arthur was so confident we were approaching. Late in the afternoon we saw a flock of gannets, and some sooty tern; the gannets passing so near that we could hear the motion of their long twisted wings. Later still, a number of small reef-birds passed over head; all were flying westward. This confirmed Arthur in his belief of the proximity of land. “See,” said he, “these little reef-birds are bound in the same direction with the others, and with ourselves; you may depend upon it, that the sea-fowl we have seen, are hastening homeward to their nests, on some not far distant shore.”
So fully did I share this confidence, that I commenced a calculation as to the time at which we might expect to reach land. Assuming it to have been thirty miles distant at the time when we had seen its spectrum, by means of the refraction, arising from a peculiar state of the atmosphere; and estimating the rate of the current at three miles an hour, I came to the conclusion that we could not even come in sight of it until late at night; and it was therefore without any strong feeling of disappointment, that I saw the day fast drawing to a close, and nothing but sky and ocean yet visible.
The sun had already set, but the long tract of crimson and flame-coloured clouds that glowed in the horizon where he had disappeared, still reflected light enough to render it easy to distinguish objects in that quarter, when I was startled by a cry of joyful surprise from the native boy, who, shading his eyes with his hands, was looking intently westward. After a long and earnest gaze, he spoke eagerly to Arthur, who told us that the boy thought he saw his native island. Looking in the same direction, I could make out nothing. Arthur and Browne spoke of a brilliantly white line, narrow, but well-defined against the horizon, as being all that they could see. Morton, who was very keen-sighted, thought that he distinguished some dark object beyond the low white band seen by the others. As the light gradually failed, we lost sight of this appearance. It was some hours before the rising of the moon, which we awaited with anxiety. She was now at her full, and when at length she came up out of the sea, her disc, broad and red like a beamless sun, seemed to rest, dilated to preternatural size, upon the edge of the last wave that swelled against the horizon. As she ascended the sky, she shed over the ocean a flood of silvery light, less glaring, but almost as bright as that of day. The wonderful brilliancy of the moon and stars within the tropics, is one of the first things noted by the voyager. It may be owing to the great clearness and transparency of the atmosphere: but whatever the cause, their light is much more powerful than in higher latitudes, and they seem actually nearer, and of greater magnitude.
We now looked eagerly westward again; the snow-white line, of which the others had spoken, was by this time distinctly visible to me also, and beyond it, too plainly relieved against the clear blue of the sky, to admit of doubt or illusion, were the high outlines of a tropical island, clothed with verdure to its summit.
Again the little islander shouted joyously, and clasped his hands, while the tears streamed down his olive cheeks.
He recognised his native island, the smallest and most easterly of the three, of which his father was the chief. We should soon come in sight of the remaining two, he said, which were lower, and lay to the north and south of it; he explained that the appearance, like a low white line running along the base of the island, was caused by the surf, bursting upon a coral reef about a mile from the shore.