Suiting his action to his words, Tom knelt down, and amid the driving rain and spray offered up a prayer, and Bill and I followed his example. The words may not have been according to formula, but I am sure they were meant reverently; and as if in answer to our prayer, the wind fell, and the rain ceased, and the stars shone brightly, while the water subsided from the surface of the reef.
We instantly set to work to look after our belongings, and found that the mast had been snapped in two and the sail torn, but that no real harm had happened to anything else.
We felt very cold and shivery, and Bill’s teeth rattled like a pair of castanets, and he said, “I wish we could make a fire; but there’s nothing to burn. Everything is soaking wet with the rain.”
“Rain can’t soak all the way through the husk of a cocoanut,” said Tom, “and there are plenty of old ones about. Now set to work to look for them, while I find a hatchet to split them up.”
We soon found not only a lot of nuts which were withered, and on being split open gave us lots of dry fibre, but also we found that many of the fronds which lay about had been so protected from the rain and spray by others that lay upon them that they were fit for fuel; and from the net-like shield or spathe of the base of the fruit-stalk we easily made kindling; and not more than half an hour after the end of the storm we had a fire blazing brightly, and were broiling turtle steaks over it and drying our clothes, laughing and talking as if we had not just escaped from death by the fact of our having chosen a bit of reef a few feet higher than the rest for our camping-place.
After a time I said, “I wonder if this island has a name. I think we may as well give it one. What do you say to Ring Island? It is just in the form of one, and where we came in is like where the stone is set.”
The other two laughed at me, and Tom said, “We want something more practical than a name; though, if you like, we will call it Ring Island. We have to think how we are to live, and how we are to get away; for I for one do not wish to stop for ever here.”
“Certainly not,” chimed in Bill and myself; “but what are your ideas?”
“I’ve had no time to think yet; but I have one, and that is that we had better go to sleep now, and then to-morrow we must explore the island, and see if we can find our boat or what remains of her.”
Bill said he did not feel sleepy; but Tom argued that if we did not sleep now, we should want to sleep in the daytime, when we should be working, and that sleep we must in order to live.