“Now,” said Boxall, “let us start.”
“We are ready,” answered Halliday; and he and I following Boxall’s example by slipping off the rock, found ourselves in water scarcely up to our middle and once more began to wade towards the shore.
Chapter Six.
A deceptive coast—What is it?—Our disappointment—A strange apparition.
An attempt to cross an unknown expanse of water, such as seemed the lagoon stretching out before us, was a hazardous experiment. Still, the water was calm, and we concluded that it was shallow, so that we hoped by perseverance to gain the dry land at last. There was no time to be lost, however, as the tide might soon rise again, and make the undertaking more difficult. I felt like a person in a dream as we waded on, surrounded on all sides by water, over which hung a peculiar silvery mist, curiously deceiving the senses,—though perhaps I was not aware of it at the time. The appearance of the shore even seemed changed. It looked altogether very different from what we expected to find it. Instead of a low sandy beach, with here and there hillocks of sand, it appeared to rise to a considerable height, with hills and intervening valleys, and lofty rocks springing directly out of the water. “We must have been further to the south than we supposed,” I observed to Boxall. “Surely we must be near the French settlements. The shore before us cannot be on the border of the great Desert of Sahara.”
“I cannot make it out,” he answered. “Still I am pretty certain as to our latitude. The country, however, is but little known, and we may have been thrown on a more fertile region than was supposed to exist.”
“I hope, then, that we shall be able to find some food,” said Halliday; “I am terribly hungry and thirsty. Don’t you think that we may by chance have got to the mouth of a river, and so may soon find fresh water?”
“This, at all events, is salt enough,” said Boxall, lifting a handful to his lips. “No; it is merely a lagoon filled by the ocean.”