“Good-morning, Mr. Bol,” said she.
“Goodt-morning, marm. I hope you vhas vell dis morning? Dot vhas der island at last. She vhas a Doytchman’s discovery. I likes to tink of der Doytchers all der way down here.”
The lady Aurora made no reply, probably not having understood a syllable of Bol’s speech. I put the telescope into the Dutchman’s hand, and bade him look for himself. The lady arched her brows at the island, and glanced interrogatively round the sea, fixing her eyes upon me full with a look of meaning. I faintly inclined my head. Often had I read her meaning in her face when I had failed to grasp her words, so facile and fluent was the eloquence of her looks.
All the crew save Hals and Jimmy were collected on the forecastle-head, staring at the island. The caboose chimney was smoking, and Hals’ head frequently showed in the caboose doorway while he took a view of the land. Galen constantly pointed and talked much, and was the center of a little crowd. Bol stood up, and said he could see no signs of a landing-place.
“There’ll be one on the eastern side, I dare say,” said I. “You’re bound to have a landing-place somewhere. I wish I had a chart of the island. The last survey I remember was D’Entrecasteaux’. It is enough, of such an island as this, to know that it exists. Look at it!”
The sun was hanging over it now; its light revealed many slopes of the land falling to the precipitous edge of the cliffs. A most horribly barren rock did it seem—desolate beyond the dreams of the wildest fancy of an uninhabited island. There may have been some sort of growth on top; I know not; I saw no verdure. All was cold, naked, iron-hard cliff, swelling centrally into a prodigious summit, around which even as I watched dense white masses of mists were beginning to form and crawl, reminding me of the magnificent growth and fall of lace-like vapor on Table Mountain—the fairest and most marvelous of all the airy sights of the world when viewed by moonlight.
I hauled the brig in to within a mile of the land, then, observing discolored water, I ordered a cast of the hand-lead to be taken; no bottom was reached. We shifted the helm, trimmed sail, and stood about southeast, rounding the point which I have since ascertained is called Vlaming Head, so named after the Dutch navigator who was off this island in 1696. Here we found fifty fathoms of water, and black sand for a bottom. The rollers broke very furiously against the base of Vlaming Head. Foam was heaped in a vast cloud there, as though the sea was kept boiling by a great volcanic flame just beneath.
We trimmed sail afresh and steered northeast. The land rose black and horribly desolate; but the swell being from the west the sea was smooth, and the tremble of surf small along the whole range this side. All this while we eagerly gazed at the coast in search of a landing-place—of any platform of sand and split of cliff by which the inland heights might be gained. Bol’s round face grew long, and he swore often in Dutch. Many of the men came aft to be within talking distance of the quarter-deck, and hoarsely-uttered remarks and oaths fell from them, as they gazed at the precipitous front of the island and beheld no spot to land on.
The wind was scarcely more than a light draught of air, owing to the interposition of the land; it was off the bow, too, by this time, and we were braced up sharp to it. I told Bol to send the crew to breakfast while the brig made a board into the northeast to enable her to fetch the northern parts of the island, where now lay our only chance of finding a landing-place. Impatience worked like madness in me, and no man of all our ship’s company could have been wilder to behold a landing-place than I.
The breezes lightly freshened as we stood off from the island. I put the brig into the hands of Galen, and went below to get some breakfast. Miss Aurora and I conversed in subdued voices; she ate little, and was pale, but I saw courage in her mouth and eyes. While Jimmy waited I told him that, if we found a landing-place, our business might be settled before sundown. “Before sundown,” said I to him, “we may, but I don’t say we shall, be sailing along, the island astern, old England before us, and a handsome promise of dollars for you, my lad, when we arrive. Are ye all there?”