It was wanting about ten minutes to four when the quarter-deck was suddenly hailed from the forecastle. The voice rang loud and startlingly upon the ear used to the continued stillness of the night.
‘Hallo!’ I cried.
‘There’s something dark right ahead,’ came back the answer.
I whipped the glass out of the companion, and walked swiftly forwards where all the crew had run to the first cry, and where I found them standing in a huddle of shadowy shapes at the rail, some pointing, and all looking in one direction.
‘Where away is the object reported?’ I exclaimed.
‘Yonder,’ cried the carpenter, stepping out of the little crowd and projecting his arm almost on a line with the jib-boom end.
I instantly perceived it! It was just a streak of shadow, low-lying, like a line of cloud beheld by night lifting a few fathoms of its brow above the sea-line. I pointed the telescope; and the lenses without revealing features, resolved the length of airy obscurity into the firm proportions of land.
‘Is it the island, sir?’ demanded the carpenter in a voice hoarse with excitement.
My own astonishment—the wonder raised in me by yonder prompt settlement of the incredulity that had possessed me from the first minute of hearing the captain’s story—the conflict of emotions which followed on my considering that the land ahead must inevitably be Braine’s island, since the chart showed clear water to the distance of the latitude of Easter Island, which the low stretch over the bows most assuredly was not, the loom being little more than that of a reef—rendered my ear deaf to the carpenter’s inquiry. He repeated his question.
‘If not, then I know not what other land it can be,’ said I. ‘How far distant will it be, think you?’