‘That’ll be a matter for consideration,’ he answered, drawing off and going to the rail and staring ahead.
‘Back the topsail yard and bring the ship to a stand, Mr. Lush,’ said I, ‘and get a cast of the lead, will you?’
These orders were immediately obeyed. The lead ran out to the whole scope of line without touching bottom. There was nothing now to be done but to wait for daylight. A whole eternity seemed to pass before the dawn broke. Then to the sifting of the dull gray faintness over the rim of the eastern sea, the land came stealing out, till, to the sudden soaring of the sun into the clear blue sky of the Pacific morning, it flashed out into its full proportions and distinctive features not a mile off our port beam as we then lay with our maintopsail aback.
The crew, neglecting all discipline and shipboard habit, were assembled in a body on the poop; and thus we all stood looking, I a little distance away from them with Miss Temple at my side. It was a small coral island, apparently of the dimensions that Captain Braine had named. To the northward the smooth water brimmed to a long shelf of coral grit, lustrous as snow in the sparkle of the early sunshine. There was a small rise, green with vegetation, in the centre of the island; how far distant, I could not imagine. Almost abreast of us, the land went in with a semicircular sweep like to a horseshoe, and was exactly the lagoon that had been described by Captain Braine. In the centre of it, just as he had marked the thing down upon his chart, rose a coral formation of the appearance of a very thick pillar, and at the distance from which we surveyed it, it might easily have passed for a monument of white stone erected by human hands, the decorated summit of which had been rudely broken off by a tempest or some volcanic shock. On a line with this pillar, some little distance up the beach of the lagoon, were several clumps of trees. There was a deal of a sort of stunted vegetation going inland from the margin of the little bay, coarse grass, as my telescope made out, tangles of bushes, and so on.
The carpenter in the midst of the men stood with the parchment chart in his hand, pointing out how the outlines corresponded with those of the land, amidst a hubbub of eager comments and exclamations of excitement. For my part, I could not credit my senses; I disputed the evidence of my own eyes; I brought them away from the island to fix them with an emotion of profound bewilderment upon Miss Temple.
‘Can it be real?’ I cried. ‘After the weeks of conviction of the utter madness of this quest, am I at last to be persuaded that the wretched suicide was not mad, that his island is a fact, and his gold an absolute reality too?’
I turned my back upon the crew to press my hands to my eyes to ease my brow of an intolerable sense of swooning in it.
‘Three cheers for him, men!’ I heard the carpenter roar out. Volley after volley of huzzas rang from the deep sea lungs of the sailors. They were cheering me. I turned to find them all looking my way. They tossed their caps and flourished their arms like madmen in the exuberance of their delight.
‘Now, sir,’ sung out the carpenter, ‘hadn’t we better see to our ground tackle?’
‘As you will,’ I answered; ‘there is your island; I have kept my word with you; now, Mr. Lush, the crew will proceed as they think proper. When you require my services again as a navigator I am ready;’ and so saying I seated myself on the edge of the skylight, and with folded arms continued to view the island with such astonishment and incredulity as made me fear for my head.