In less than ten minutes’ time she struck, grounding lightly and getting off again; then she plunged forward, driven high on the beach by an incoming wave, and was as motionless as if she had never pitched and tossed through mountainous billows or careened to the angry rush of the storm-lashed sea.
Frank relinquished his grasp of the wheel, and drew a long breath of mingled regret and satisfaction.
“Fast aground till a squall comes along and breaks you up,” he said, as if speaking to the vessel. “It’s all there was left for either of us to do, for we are death, it seems, to every one that comes near us.”
Hardly a dozen yards were between him and solid earth. Frank soon had the ladder over the side, and in two minutes more was on shore.
He ran up and down the beach a little way, shouting at intervals as loud as he could, but there was no answer.
Scores of beautiful little paroquets were chattering in the palm trees, and numbers of long-legged sea-fowl stalking about on the reef, but no human being, or any sign of one, did he see.
It was necessary that he should know something about the size of the island before deciding what next it was best to do, so he set out to explore its wooded portion and ascertain what the prospects were for living on it for an indefinite length of time.
An hour’s tramp showed him that it was perhaps two miles long by less than half that distance wide, and to all appearance no human being other than himself had ever set foot upon it.
The northern part was simply a barren rock, fissured and seamed by the action of the water, its base marked by a tossing line of foam of ominous import, for it told of the sunken reefs hidden beneath its restless ebb and flow, and extending far out to sea. The
southern and eastern end were covered with a dense growth of tropical vegetation, but fresh water he did not find, or any animal, great or small. Many varieties of brilliantly-plumaged birds flew screaming away at his approach, but they were the only living things he saw.