Chapter Eight.

The pirate junks.

To con a ship into and along a narrow winding channel, with no possibility of return, and with the certain knowledge that the slightest mistake, the smallest error of judgment, meant the destruction of the vessel, and the drowning of every individual on board her, was nervous work for a lad of my years. As I stood there on the royal yard, with my arm round the masthead to steady myself upon my somewhat precarious perch, and my gaze concentrated upon the thin line of unbroken water that twisted hither and thither through the seething turmoil of yeasty froth, swirling and boiling on either hand, I burst into a drenching perspiration. For it must be remembered that I had assumed the enormous responsibility of plunging the ship into the inextricable situation which I have indicated upon the impulse of a moment, generated by a conviction that in no other manner could we hope to escape from the labyrinth of shoals in which we had become involved. Furthermore, I had been spurred to the act by the hope, rather than the certainty, that the channel along which we were now sweeping with what, to my apprehensiveness, seemed headlong speed, offered us an unobstructed passage to open water. Yet now, when retreat was impossible, I began to fear that I had been fatally mistaken; for at a certain spot in the channel along which I proposed to take the ship I saw that the water, which happened to have been unbroken at the instant when I arrived at my momentous decision, was now all aboil with foam for a space of three or four ship’s-lengths, as though an impassable obstruction existed there. If this were the case, but one slender hope remained for us, the hope that before that obstruction should be reached we might find a part of the channel wide enough to permit the ship to round-to and anchor, thus giving us time to make a more deliberate search for a way of escape.

This hope, however, was an exceedingly slender one, for the channel which we were traversing was appallingly narrow, averaging very little more than a couple of lengths of the ship, which was considerably less than half the minimum space that I required for the contemplated manoeuvre. But while I was anxiously searching the channel ahead, on the lookout for such a spot, I suddenly caught sight of another channel, branching out of the one which we were then traversing, which unquestionably ran without a break into the small patch of open water of which I have already spoken, and from which a good channel led into the open sea. The only question was whether there was room enough to allow the ship to take the sweep out of the one channel into the other without going ashore upon the reef; for the new channel branched off at a very acute angle, and there appeared to be even less width than usual at the junction of the two channels.

Here was another momentous question for me to decide, unaided, in the space of a few seconds—for there was not time enough to permit of my summoning the boatswain aloft and consulting him upon the matter. I had to make up my mind whether to continue along the channel which the ship was then in, trusting that the appearance indicative of an obstruction was illusory, or whether I would take the risk of wrecking the ship on the reef in an endeavour to pass round a very acute angle into the newly-discovered channel, which I was by this time able to see would certainly enable us to reach open water. It was difficult to determine which of the two alternatives was the more desperate; but as the ship went driving along toward the point, once past which a choice would no longer be possible, I fancied that the prospect of being able to turn into the new channel looked a trifle less hopeless than it did a few minutes earlier, while the appearance of an obstruction in the original channel was still as menacing as ever, I therefore determined to put all to the hazard of the die and make the attempt to get into the new channel. This decision arrived at, I hailed Polson to send all hands to their stations in readiness to brace round the yards smartly at the word of command, and for the helmsman to respond instantly to my signals for the manipulation of the wheel. Then, as we rushed down toward the turning-point, I caused the ship to be edged gradually up to windward, until her weather side was all but scraping the coral of the reef, in order to secure every possible inch of turning-space, at the same time narrowly watching the channel ahead that I might be able to determine accurately the precise moment when to shift the helm. Twice or thrice in as many seconds did my courage fail me and all but determine me to take the risk of keeping straight head, but when the critical moment arrived I was once more master of myself and was able to give the order: “Hard up with your helm! Brail in the spanker, and shiver the mizen topsail!”

Polson, recognising the necessity for prompt action at the helm, had sent a second hand to the wheel, and at the first sound of my voice these two men sent the wheel spinning hard over with all their united strength, while at the same moment the men tending the after braces had relieved the ship of the pressure of the whole of the canvas upon her mizenmast, the craft accordingly swerved away from the wind with almost the alacrity of a living thing, and the next moment she was swirling round, as though upon a pivot, shaving the obstructive angle of the reef by a hairbreadth, and coming to with the wind over the starboard quarter, when the rounding of her port bow was actually dashing aside the white water, while I clung to my masthead in fear and trembling, waiting for the shock which should tell me that she had struck. As a matter of fact, she actually did, very slightly, graze the coral for a few feet of her length, just beneath the port main chains, for I afterwards saw the marks upon her sheathing; but it was the merest touch, the shock of which was scarcely perceptible, and the next moment she had luffed fair into the centre of the new channel, and was speeding away to the northward and eastward. This new channel was so exceedingly narrow and tortuous that the vessel still needed the most careful watching; but, compared with that sharp turn, the remaining portion of the navigation was simple, and a trifle over two hours later I had the extreme satisfaction of seeing the Mercury sweep clear of the edge of the reef into blue water, and to feel her once more rising and falling upon the swell of the open ocean. Then I made my way down on deck and, having given the officer of the watch the course, retired to the cabin to enjoy a good breakfast, before lying down to recover some of my arrears of rest.

At noon on the fifth day after this exceedingly awkward adventure, our latitude, as computed from the meridian altitude of the sun, showed that we had fairly cleared the Molucca Passage and had reached the waters, wherein our search for the ideal island pictured by Wilde’s vivid imagination was to begin. I therefore gave orders for the ship to be brought to the wind on the starboard tack, and we plunged into the vast North Pacific Ocean, shortly afterward sighting the Tulur Islands on our lee beam.

In the course of the next day we sighted and passed two groups of islands within twenty miles of each other, standing in close enough to each to enable us to form a pretty accurate idea of their character; but they were altogether too small and insignificant to meet with Wilde’s approval, so we left them without even taking the trouble to land and give them an overhaul.

On the following day, the ship still heading to the northward, we sighted a couple of junks, about a mile apart, steering south. They were made out from the forecastle-head, about three points on the lee bow, at four bells of the forenoon watch; and the emigrants, who were all on deck, manifested much interest in the quaint appearance of the craft, as they approached us close-hauled. There was only a very moderate breeze blowing—we were carrying all three of our royals—and there was no sea to speak of, yet, despite these favourable conditions, I must confess that I was not a little astonished to see how nimbly those two unwieldy-looking craft moved over the water, and how close to the wind they contrived to lie—this last, of course, being due to the almost absolutely flat set of their mat sails. The weathermost of the two looked as though she might cross our stern, at a distance of not much more than a quarter of a mile. I got up the glass and had a look at them when they were about two miles distant, but found nothing very interesting about them, after I had noted their strangeness of model and rig, and the quaint, decorative painting of their hulls, the bows of each especially being painted to represent a human face with great, staring goggle eyes, and of most diabolically ferocious aspect. Grace Hartley was standing near me; and when, having completed my inspection of the junks, I was about to return the telescope to its beckets, she asked me if she might be permitted to use it. Of course I at once handed the instrument to her, and then walked away to attend to some business of the ship, returning to the poop when the leading junk was within half a mile of us, with her two masts in line.

“What singular-looking vessels, are they not, Mr Troubridge?” exclaimed the girl, withdrawing the instrument from her eye for a moment to speak to me. “Of course,” she continued, “I have seen pictures of Chinese junks; but one really needs to see the vessels themselves, sailing as those are, to get the complete idea of their quaintness of appearance. And what an extraordinary number of men they carry! Is it because of the peculiarity of their rig and the large size of their sails that they require so many men?”

“N–o,” said I doubtfully, “I think not. I am not aware that a junk needs an exceptionally strong crew. Do you consider that those vessels are very heavily manned?”

“Well, are they not?” she asked. “Of course I have no idea how many men a junk requires to manage it, but I have been looking at those two—and especially the nearest one—through the glass, and it struck me that they must each have at least a hundred men on board!”

“A hundred men!” I repeated incredulously. “Oh, surely not! You must be mistaken. Twenty, or perhaps twenty-five at the utmost, would be much nearer the mark.”

“Oh, but I am certain there are far more than that on board each of those vessels! It was one of the peculiarities that particularly impressed me in connection with them,” answered the girl.

“Are you quite sure? Kindly let me have the glass a moment,” said I, taking the instrument from her and levelling it at the nearest junk. The junk, however, was by this time settling away broad on our lee beam, as we drew ahead, and was showing her weather side to us. It was therefore difficult for me to get a view of her decks, the more so as her bulwarks seemed to be unusually high. One thing, however, I noticed, namely, that she carried eight brass guns—apparently about twelve-pounders—of a side; and as I got a glimpse through the wide ports out of which these weapons grinned, it seemed to me that there were men stationed at them!

In a flash my thoughts reverted to the Braave, the Dutch barque that we had fallen in with a week ago, with her cargo plundered and her murdered crew cumbering her decks; and I sang out for Tudsbery to come aft, that individual being at the moment busy upon some job on the forecastle, as was frequently the case during his watch, if I happened to be on the poop.

“Tudsbery,” said I, as he joined me on the poop, “I think I remember having heard you say that you have seen service in the China trade. I want you to take a good look at those two junks—if you have not yet done so—and give me your opinion of them.”

“I’ve had a squint at ’em, of course, Mr Troubridge,” he answered, as I handed him the glass; “but I haven’t noticed anything extra partic’lar about ’em, so far.” And he applied the instrument to his eye.

“You don’t imagine, for instance, that they are cruising in company; or that they are other than honest trading junks?” I asked.

“Well, I dunno,” he replied, working away at them with the glass. “Perhaps it is a bit strange, seein’ two of ’em out here so close together, and both of ’em steerin’ exactly the same course. Yes, and, by George, now I comes to look at ’em through the glass, I sees that they are both of ’em armed—this here nearest one mounts eight barkers of a side, and I’ll be hanged if I don’t believe her people are a-trainin’ of ’em upon us! Yes; dash me if they ain’t! You’d better look out, sir; they mean to slap a broadside into us in another minute, or I’m a Dutchman!”

I turned and faced forward. “Go below, all of you!” I shouted. “Down with you at once! That junk is going to fire upon us, and some of you may be hurt. Miss Hartley,” turning to the girl, who was standing close beside us, “go down off the poop and get under cover at once, if you please—”

Bang! crash! Eight jets of flame and smoke leapt from the port battery of the nearest junk, which had by this time drawn down broad on our lee quarter, some three cable-lengths distant, and the next instant the air all round us seemed thick with humming missiles, many of which struck the hull and bulwarks of the ship, making the splinters fly, while others passed through our lower canvas, perforating it in two or three dozen places, and providing a nice little repairing job for the hands in some of their future spare moments. A hurried glance along the decks, however, assured me that nobody had been hurt, although there was a good deal of screaming among the women, while several of the children, in the process of being hustled below by their parents, started crying vigorously. Meanwhile Miss Hartley, after pausing a moment to stare in astonishment at the splintered bulwarks and the riddled sails, calmly descended the poop ladder and made her way into the cabin.

“Well,” exclaimed Chips, “swamp me if that ain’t the rummiest go as ever I seen! That junk’s a pirate junk, Mr Troubridge, neither more nor less; and in my opinion t’other one’s no better. Look at that, sir; there she goes in stays! Tell ye what, sir, they means to get us in between ’em if they can!”

“Upon my word, Chips, I believe you are right!” said I, as the more distant of the two junks swept up into the wind, preparatory to going round on the other tack. “And if they should succeed it will be a pretty poor lookout for all hands aboard this ship! Have we any arms of any description, do you know, with which to defend ourselves?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, Mr Troubridge,” answered the carpenter in tones of great concern. “I haven’t seen none. But there may be a few muskets, or some’at of that sort, stowed away somewheres down below, for all that I knows. If there is, I dare say the bosun’ll know where to lay his hands upon ’em.”

“Then the best thing that you can do will be to go down and call the boatswain, and put the question to— ah, here he is!” as Polson’s head showed above the poop ladder. “Come up here, Polson!” I exclaimed; “you are just the man we want. That junk astern of us has just treated us to a broadside of langrage, and Chips’s opinion of the pair of them is that they are a couple of piratical craft. Have we any firearms of any kind aboard with which to defend the ship, or must we run for it?”

“I believe that there’s a case of two dozen muskets and some ammunition down in a little bit of a magazine abaft the lazarette,” answered Polson; “and I fancies that there’s a few round shot for them two six-pounders of ours. Shall I go down and have a look, Mr Troubridge?”

“Yes, certainly,” said I; “and be quick about it too, Polson. To be perfectly frank with you, I don’t half like the look of things. That junk that has just tacked is looking up a good point higher than we are, and unless we happen to have the heels of her, I fancy that we are in for a warm time.”

The boatswain waited to hear no more, but scuttled away off the poop again with more alacrity than I had seen him exhibit since I had joined the Mercury. Meanwhile the watch below, awakened by the racket, had come on deck, and were having the situation explained to them with much gesticulation and lurid language by their comrades, the watch on deck, all of whom had knocked off the work upon which they happened to have been engaged, and were now talking excitedly, casting occasional glances from us on the poop to the junk away down on the lee bow. Presently the junk which had fired into us, having drawn up fair into our wake, distant about half a mile, tacked and stood after us.

After an absence of some ten minutes, the boatswain reappeared with the news that he had found and opened the case of muskets, which were of the new-fashioned percussion pattern, and also a generous supply of ammunition for the same, together with some fifty round shot and cartridges for the six-pounders.

“Good!” I exclaimed. “Take some hands below, Polson, and bring up that case of muskets, together with some ammunition; also a few rounds for the six-pounders. If appearances go for anything, we shall need them all before long!”

A few minutes later the muskets, each of which had been carefully wrapped in well-oiled cloths, were brought on deck, taken out of their wrappings, well wiped, the nipples carefully tested with a pin, and loaded, the powder being measured out from a powder horn, a wad rammed down on top of it, with a bullet on top of that, and then another wad on top of all to keep the bullet in its place. Then the brass six-pounders were loaded and primed, and two pieces of slow match were cut off, ready for lighting.

I must confess that I looked forward to the prospect of a fight with a considerable amount of trepidation, for, in the first place, the odds were exceedingly heavy against us—thirty of a crew, of whom only twenty-four could be armed, against, probably, two hundred. Moreover, our lads knew nothing about fighting, and, as I could see, had not much stomach for it, while the crews of the junks were undoubtedly fighters by trade. Still it was clear that we were in a fix, out of which there was no escape without a fight; and that fact, which was patent to all hands, might perhaps influence them to do their best. But probably there were some among them who had never handled a musket in their lives; it would obviously be useless to put weapons into the hands of such men, and my first business must be to ascertain how many men were capable of using firearms. I therefore directed the boatswain to call all hands aft to the quarter-deck, where I addressed them.

“My lads,” said I, “your leader’s plans, and your own folly in abetting them, have brought us into perilous waters, as you may see, for the two junks which are endeavouring to close with us are undoubtedly pirate craft. Unfortunately, none of us suspected their character until it was too late; and now we are in a trap from which we can only escape by fighting. And we must not only fight—we must also beat them off; for, as I suppose you all know, if we permit ourselves to fall into their hands, our fate will be similar to that of the unfortunate crew of the Dutch barque with which we fell in the other day. Now we have here two dozen muskets, with plenty of ammunition, and also a few rounds for the six-pounders; so we are not badly off for weapons if we only have men enough who know how to use them. Let as many of you as know how to use a musket step to the front. And if any of you know anything about working guns, step forward too.”

Exactly twenty men stepped to the front, sixteen of whom declared that they could use a musket, while the remaining four announced that they were capable of loading and firing cannon.

“Very well,” said I, “we must all do our utmost; for fight we must. Those of you who are unable to fight must act as sail-trimmers. Polson and Tudsbery, you must take charge of the guns. Steward, go below and tell the emigrants that I want eight volunteers capable of handling muskets; and they must preferably be single men. Polson, you may serve out ammunition to the musketry men; and, hark ye, lads, when the time to shoot arrives, do not blaze away at random, but select a mark, and do your best to hit it! Now range yourselves along the lee rail, and do not fire until I give the word.”

Chapter Nine.

We beat off the pirates.

A few minutes later the steward returned from the ’tween-decks, followed by seven very decent-looking young fellows, who appeared as if they might have been farm hands, and announced that they knew how to handle a fowling-piece, and they supposed that a musket was not very greatly different. To these men muskets and ammunition were accordingly distributed, and they were put among the seamen stationed along the lee rail. This left one musket unemployed, at which I was by no means sorry; for I rather fancied myself as a shot, and was glad of a good excuse to appropriate one of the weapons.

Our arrangements being now complete, I had leisure to consider the relative positions of the two junks as regarded ourselves, and it needed but a single glance to assure me that the enemy’s vessels, unwieldy and awkward as their model seemed to be, had the advantage of us in the matter of weatherliness; for they looked up a good point and a half higher than the Mercury, and although they made more leeway than ourselves, that point and a half fully compensated for it, the consequence being that the junk astern was gradually working out upon our weather quarter, while the junk on our lee bow was also hawsing up to windward. We were slightly faster than they, however, and were consequently drawing away from the junk astern, from which I hoped we had not much more to fear. But the junk on our lee bow was certain to give us trouble, for we were gaining upon her while she was edging up nearer to our track every minute, with the result that, by the time that we overhauled her, we should be within biscuit-toss of each other. And I could not hope to escape her by tacking ship, for she would probably be quite as quick in stays as ourselves, possibly a trifle quicker. Such an evolution would place her broad on our weather quarter, and far enough to windward to permit of her edging down on us with slack bowlines, while we should be jammed close on a wind, an advantage which, I believed, would give her the heels of us and enable her to lay us aboard. This, I felt, must be avoided at all costs; for if once her crew should gain a footing upon our decks their numbers were sufficient to overpower us instantly. I therefore determined to slip past her to windward and run the gauntlet of her fire; that risk, terrible as it was, being, to my mind, less than the other.

Having thus decided, I called to Polson to ask him how we were off in the matter of bullets, to which he replied that there were half a dozen kegs altogether. This being the case, I thought we might venture to be a trifle extravagant, so I gave orders for a keg to be brought on deck, and for the two six-pounders to be loaded with bullets practically to the muzzle, on top of a round shot. This was done, four double—handfuls—amounting to about one hundred bullets—being dropped into the gun on top of the round shot, and a wad rammed home on the top of all. This done, the two guns were run forward and pointed out through the two foremost ports on the lee side of the deck.

We were now all ready for the fight, and nothing remained but to await the critical moment with such composure as we could summon to our aid. In one respect we were more fortunate than many other ships would have been in the same situation, for our helmsman was sheltered in a sort of little hurricane house built of stout planking over the wheel, and he was therefore in some degree protected from jingal fire. Indeed I hoped that the planking of the structure would turn out to be absolutely proof against the missiles usually fired from such weapons, which I expected would be the firearm used by the pirates. Thus we might hope we should avoid being thrown into confusion at the critical moment by our helmsman being killed or disabled.

At length we drew up within point-blank musketry range of the junk that was endeavouring to close upon our lee bow, and I gave the word for those armed with that weapon, while keeping carefully under cover themselves, to open fire upon any of the pirates who might expose themselves. Almost immediately a dozen shots rang out from our decks, and a few splinters flew aboard the junk, but I could neither see nor hear that any further mischief had been done.

“Watch her ports, lads, and fire through them,” I ordered. “If you can shoot down the men at her weather battery during the few minutes that we are passing her you will have nothing more to fear.”

At this moment a perfect giant of a man ascended the short poop of the junk and stood calmly watching us, occasionally saying a word or two to those on the deck beneath him. He had scarcely taken up his position, however, before our men began to blaze away at him, and presently a bullet knocked his hat off, while, as he was calmly stooping to pick it up again, another bullet must have struck him on the right shoulder; for I saw him suddenly clap his hand to that part and hastily retreat from his exposed situation, without stopping to pick up the hat.

“Hurrah, lads!” I shouted. “There is first blood to us. Keep the pot boiling; but don’t shoot until you can see somebody to shoot at!”

At this moment the weather bulwark of the junk became suddenly lined with men all armed with jingals, with which they proceeded to blaze away at us, and some half a dozen or more missiles went whizzing past most unpleasantly close to my head. Nobody was hurt, however, and our men returned the fire with commendable steadiness, scoring a few hits, if one might judge by the cries that arose on board the junk, and the suddenness with which some five or six of her people sank out of sight behind her bulwarks. Then fresh hands appeared, showing suddenly above the rail, taking rapid aim, pulling trigger, and vanishing out of sight, not always quickly enough, however, to dodge the bullets that our people sent whizzing about their ears.

Thus far not one of the Mercury’s people had been touched; but the critical moment was yet to come. It was now close at hand, however, for our figurehead had drawn up level with the stern of the junk, and there was not more than fifty fathoms of water between the two craft. We might expect their broadside at any moment, and I felt that it was scarcely possible for us to receive it at such very short range without receiving very severe punishment. I therefore exhorted our people to maintain a hot fire upon the ports of the junk, feeling-convinced that every bullet which passed through would be almost certain to find its billet in the body of a Chinaman, thus tending to flurry their gunners and possibly cause them to shoot wide.

We were now so close that I was able to see that the junk needed a trifle of lee helm to keep her close to the wind; and I had no sooner noted this fact than I saw a man show his head for an instant above the break of the junk’s poop and sign to the helmsman to put his helm hard down. I guessed in an instant what this meant. They were about to throw the junk into the wind, in the hope that she would fall aboard of us, when they would pour their starboard broadside into us and board amidst the smoke. They could not possibly have hit upon a plan more likely to succeed, or to be fatal to us; and, recognising the deadly nature of our peril, I yelled to our people at once to fling themselves flat on the deck, which they did with almost laughable promptitude. At the same time I seized my musket, which thus far I had not fired, and, kneeling down, with one of the poop hencoops as a rest, aimed straight at the body of the junk’s helmsman, just as he was thrusting the tiller hard down. I pulled the trigger the instant that I had the man covered, and down he dropped, motionless, the ponderous tiller escaping from his grasp and swinging heavily back amidships, with the result that the junk, which was already coming to, at once fell off again at the precise instant when her whole starboard broadside burst into flame and smoke, the missiles luckily passing just ahead of us and very considerably damaging our figurehead, but doing no worse injury. By a most fortunate chance I had made my lucky shot at the exact moment which alone could save us from disaster. To give the pirates their due, at least a dozen men instantly sprang up on the poop, and rushed aft to replace the injured helmsman; but our people had been watching through a number of peep-holes what was happening, and no sooner did they see the Chinese on the poop than they leaped to their feet, and opened fire upon them with such murderous effect that half of them dropped, while the other half turned and fled from the poop, seeking shelter under cover of their craft’s bulwarks.

Left thus to herself, the junk gradually fell broad off, presenting her quarter to us. The opportunity thus afforded to pour into her a partially raking fire was much too good to let slip, and I shouted to the boatswain and Chips to send the contents of their pieces into her starboard bulwark, hoping that some at least of the bullets would enter her open ports and do a certain amount of execution. The two men had evidently been expecting such an order and had got their pieces ready levelled. A couple of seconds later the two six-pounders barked out together, and the two hundred bullets peppered the junk’s bulwarks most handsomely, many of them penetrating the planking, as I could both see and hear; for the next instant a dreadful, ear-splitting yell arose from the deck of the craft, telling a tale of very severe punishment. But that was not all; the two round shot likewise crashed through the bulwarks very effectively, one of them dismounting a gun, while the other brought the craft’s mainmast down, thus effectually placing her hors de combat. Those two shots must have wrought terrible havoc among the junk’s crew, for not only did they not attempt to return our fire, but they allowed their vessel to run broad off before the wind, squaring away their foresail the better to do so; and presently the junk in our wake abandoned the chase and bore up to join her consort. We thus emerged marvellously well from a predicament that at one moment threatened to be exceedingly serious, and that, too, without the slightest injury to so much as a single one of our company.

It was remarked that Wilde had most scrupulously refrained from obtruding his presence on deck during our little brush with the junks, which exhibition of pusillanimity on the part of a man who aspired to the position of head and leader of the little community provoked a great deal of adverse criticism, and considerably reduced his influence and popularity.

On the fourth day following the above incident, with the appearance of dawn, we sighted land ahead, which, as we drew nearer, resolved itself into three islands lying close together, the largest of which measured about eight miles long by three miles wide, while the remaining two were roughly circular in shape, measuring about a mile in diameter. The two smaller islands presented the appearance of low pyramids with rounded tops, their highest points rising some eight hundred feet above the sea level, while the biggest of the three rose somewhat abruptly from the water to a height of about fifteen hundred feet at each extremity, and preserved that height pretty uniformly from end to end, but with an elevation rising perhaps three hundred feet higher almost in the middle of its length.

All three of the islands were well wooded; but the largest had been cleared to some extent of its timber, the cleared ground bearing evidences of being under cultivation. This, of course, indicated that at least the largest of the islands was already inhabited, and was therefore unsuited to the requirements of Wilde and his followers, who wanted to find a spot where they would be reasonably free from all risk of molestation by hostile natives. Nevertheless, it was decided to approach the islands a little nearer, if only for the chance of being able to procure some fruit and a few fresh vegetables, for which all hands were by this time pining. However, since we knew nothing of the character of the inhabitants, but were under a sort of general impression that the natives of all the islands of the Eastern seas were of a more or less treacherous character, while some at least of them were very strongly suspected of cannibalistic tendencies, we determined to adopt every possible precaution. The muskets were accordingly brought on deck and loaded, while every man who had not a musket served out to him took care to provide himself with a weapon of some sort, even though it were no more formidable than a belaying pin. I also insisted that the ship should be kept under way, in order that, upon the first suggestion of treacherous designs upon the part of the natives, we might be able to make sail and stand out to sea again.

Approaching the lee side of the biggest of the three islands, one hand was sent aloft into the fore topmast crosstrees to keep a sharp lookout for submerged rocks, while another was sent into the fore chains with the hand lead. Then we clewed up our courses, royals, and topgallantsails, and hauled down our flying jib and some of the lighter staysails, but furled nothing, leaving all in a state to be set again from the deck at a moment’s notice.

The water in the immediate neighbourhood of these islands was deep, no bottom being reached with the hand lead until we were within half a mile of the shore, at which distance we brought the ship to the wind and laid the main topsail to the mast, as it was seen that many natives had gathered on the beach, and were making preparations to launch their canoes, several of which were hauled up on the dazzlingly white sand. I kept the ship’s telescope steadily bearing upon these craft and the numerous natives who swarmed about them, and was greatly relieved to see that the latter all appeared to be busily engaged in loading the former with baskets of fruit, fish, and quantities of fowls, while nowhere could I discover anything resembling a weapon.

That these people were quite accustomed to the bartering of their produce with passing ships, and had been taught to understand that they would not be allowed on board, was evident; for, although within the next half-hour we were surrounded by quite a hundred canoes of various sizes, ranging from the sixteen-foot craft with two occupants up to the vessel measuring fifty feet over all, manned by from twenty to thirty natives, not one attempted to come alongside until specially invited to do so. They simply lay off a few fathoms and held up to our view the wares that they had for disposal, and then waited to be beckoned to approach.

These natives were for the most part fine, lithe, active-looking men, of a deep, rich, bronze colour. Most of them were almost naked, and adorned with necklaces of shells or sharks’ teeth, their hair so arranged that it stuck out all round their heads like the thrums of a twirled mop. A few of them wore necklaces or armlets of vari-coloured beads, of which they appeared to be inordinately proud, and these adornments furnished many of our people with a hint as to the kind of article most desired in exchange, a whole basket of assorted fruit, as heavy as one man could conveniently lift, being freely parted with for a hank containing five strings of ordinary glass beads which, at home, would cost about a penny. Next to beads, copper wire appeared to be the most prized commodity, nails coming next, such a basket of fruit as I have just described, or half a dozen fowls, costing twenty two-inch nails; while a dozen baskets of fruit were eagerly offered for a single six-inch spike. Fish-hooks, too, commanded good prices, that is to say, two baskets of fruit, or one dozen fowls, sold for a single hook. Fish, of which several basketfuls were brought off, were to be had almost for the asking, a basket containing about fifty pounds weight of delicious fresh fish being gladly given in exchange for a single ordinary pin! At such prices as these the crew and emigrants would willingly have taken as much as the natives had for sale, if I would have allowed it; but I was afraid to let them have too much fresh fruit all at once, lest they should make themselves ill; but we took every fowl that we could get hold of, killing enough to serve all hands for dinner that day, and putting the rest into the coops, which had by this time become almost empty.

It took us nearly two hours to complete our purchases, for I would not allow more than four canoes alongside at the same moment; and when we had acquired as much produce as I thought it prudent to lay in at one time, the mainyard was swung, the fore and main tacks boarded, and we resumed our voyage, parting from the natives with mutual smiles and upon the best of terms. I was very much gratified at this first experience of intercourse with the Pacific islanders, for it seemed to me that it would be impossible to find a more quiet, amiable, peace-loving race of people on the face of the earth. I made the mistake of judging the whole by a very few, and set down the stories I had heard of treachery, cruelty, and blood-curdling tragedy as malicious fables. I was speedily disillusioned, however; for a week later we reached the Caroline Islands; and while we found some of these islanders as friendly disposed as those above-mentioned, there were others who did their utmost to entice us to land and place ourselves within their power, and on one occasion, when they failed in this, produced hidden weapons and resolutely attacked the ship, giving us all that we could do to beat them off, and more or less seriously injuring three seamen and two of the male emigrants. This little experience taught us all a much-needed lesson in prudence; for it was more by luck than good management that we avoided capture and the general massacre that would most assuredly have followed.

For the next five weeks we cruised among these islands, vainly seeking the earthly paradise that Wilde had taught all hands to expect, and with less than which none of them would be satisfied. For such islands as seemed to approach Wilde’s standard in the matter of size and fertility were already inhabited, and that, too, for the most part, by natives whose pressing invitations to land, and lavishly proffered hospitality, we had learned to regard with something more than suspicion; while the uninhabited islands were invariably found to be wholly lacking in some essential feature.

Then, leaving the Carolines behind us, we passed on to the Marshall group, where the atoll—which we had already encountered in a somewhat modified form here and there among the Carolines—was to be found in its typically perfect development. Here the islands, such as they were, were entirely of coral formation, of diminutive area, generally not more than six or eight feet above the surface of the ocean, their vegetation consisting of a few coconut trees, with, maybe, a patch or two of coarse grass here and there, and possibly a few stunted bushes, the whole constituting a more or less irregularly shaped belt enclosing a saltwater lagoon, usually with an entrance from the open sea, and with water enough inside to float a ship; but sometimes with no entrance at all. A fortnight among these atolls sufficed to convince the most optimistic among us that what we were looking for was not to be found in that neighbourhood. Accordingly we bade farewell to the group, to my intense relief, for, between the shoals and the currents, I was worried very nearly into a fever, and scarcely dared to leave the deck day or night.

Once clear of the Marshall Islands, we stood away to the northward, gradually hauling round, as the wind favoured us, to about west-nor’-west, occasionally sighting a small island, but more frequently broken water, until at length, when we had been out from the Marshall group close upon three weeks, land was made at daybreak, bearing two points on the lee bow. It was at a considerable distance, for it showed soft and delicate of tint as a cloud in the brilliant light of the newly risen sun, but that it was good, solid earth was clear enough from the fact that it did not in the slightest degree alter its truncated conical shape as the minutes sped. True, there was no land shown on the chart at that precise spot; but that did not alter the fact of it being there; and since it showed above the horizon from the deck at a distance which we estimated at fully fifty miles, it was concluded that it must be of fairly respectable size, and quite worth looking at more closely; the helm was therefore shifted, and we kept dead away for it.

The ship was slipping along at about seven knots, before a nice little easterly breeze, under all plain sail—that being as much canvas as I cared to show, bearing in mind the fact that not infrequently, of late, we had been obliged to haul our wind rather suddenly in consequence of white water revealing itself unexpectedly at no great distance ahead. But although we were travelling at this quite respectable pace—for the Mercury—we did not appear to be decreasing our distance from the land ahead nearly so rapidly as we had anticipated, which circumstance led me to the conclusion that I had considerably underestimated that distance in the first instance. And this conclusion proved to be correct, for at six bells in the afternoon watch we were still fully seven miles from the island. But we had arrived within four miles of what, from the fore topmast crosstrees, I had been able to identify as a barrier reef that appeared to extend from the northern to the southern extremity of the island—and, indeed, might completely surround it, for aught that I could tell—enclosing a magnificently spacious harbour, some three miles wide between itself and the island, which I estimated to measure about ten miles long, from north to south, with a peak, apparently the crater of an extinct, or at all events a quiescent, volcano, approximating to three thousand feet high, rising almost in the centre of it. It was wooded from the inner margin of the somewhat narrow, sandy beach that lined it to within about three hundred feet of the summit of the peak; and—most promising of all, from the point of view of Wilde and his followers—there were no canoes on the beach, or any other signs of inhabitants.

Chapter Eleven.

An end to my responsibilities.

As I stepped out of the rigging on to the rail, and stood there grasping a backstay, there was a sudden rushing together of the crowd, every eye sought mine, and a few of the more eager ones stretched out their hands, as though to grasp me and thus establish a sort of claim to my immediate attention. But I had no inclination to subject myself to the sort of cross-questioning that might be expected from folk of the class of which the emigrants were largely composed. I therefore raised my hand for silence and to command attention, and when I saw that they were ready to listen to me I began.

“I can see,” I said, “that you are all very naturally anxious to learn what I have been able to discover concerning yonder beautiful island during my long stay aloft. I will therefore embrace the opportunity which you have given me, by assembling yourselves together, to tell you collectively the result of my observations.

“To begin with the size of the island, of which you are probably as well able to judge as I am. Roughly speaking, it is of circular shape, as you have already had the opportunity to see for yourselves, and I estimate its diameter to be, as nearly as may be, ten miles. This should give you an area of somewhere about seventy-eight and a half square miles, or upwards of fifty thousand acres, of which probably three-quarters will be found useful for any purpose to which you may wish to put it. I therefore think you will agree with me that the island is amply large enough to accommodate you all, and find you plenty of employment for the remainder of your lives. I have seen several streams of water, evidently fresh, flowing down its slopes; you are therefore not likely to perish of thirst; on the contrary, there must be an abundant supply, judging from the evidences of abounding fertility that we see everywhere. I have observed no signs of animals, noxious or otherwise, nor do I very well understand how they could get here, taking into consideration the fact that there is no other land near at hand from which they could have come; you are not likely, therefore, to experience any trouble from that source. And, lastly, I have seen no signs of inhabitants; it would therefore appear that your title to the island is as good as that of anyone else;” (loud cheers). “But,” I continued, “I do not think it would be altogether wise to assume that the island is uninhabited simply because I have been unable to discover from aloft any trace of human presence. For aught that we know to the contrary, the place may be swarming with natives, eager to obtain possession of this ship and her cargo; and since we first entered these waters we have had more than one opportunity of judging what would be likely to happen, should we be so unfortunate as to fall into the power of such people. I therefore propose that instead of all hands swarming ashore, and leaving the ship to take care of herself—as I see you all seem inclined to do—the muskets, with a good supply of ammunition, shall be served out to those most capable of making a good use of them, and half of that number shall go ashore as an exploring party to examine the island thoroughly, while the other half shall remain aboard to take care of the ship. Then, when you have satisfied yourselves that there are no hostile natives to molest you, we will take the ship into yonder cove, and all hands can then land without fear.” This last proposition of mine was evidently extremely unpopular, with no one more so than Wilde, who, thrusting himself through the crowd, hotly demanded to know who I thought I was that I should presume to dictate to them as to who should and who should not land. But there were a few level-headed ones among the party who, while freely acknowledging how tantalising it would be to those left on board to gaze upon the island without being permitted to land upon it, were quite able to recognise the prudence of my suggestion, among them being Polson and the carpenter. At length, after much animated discussion, not altogether free from the flavour of acrimony, the proposal was adopted, and the difficult task of choosing those who were to form the exploring party was proceeded with. Wilde demanded that he should be included among the party upon the ground that he was the originator of the scheme which had brought us all to the island; and as I saw no particular reason for resisting this demand, I allowed it to pass unchallenged, merely insisting that Polson should be the leader of the expedition; while four others would necessarily have to be seamen, in order to handle the boat and bring her quickly back to the ship in the event of anything in the nature of a hasty retreat becoming advisable. Thus five of the twelve explorers were seamen, and the whole of these I personally nominated, being careful to choose the most steady and reliable for so important a service, while the remaining six were chosen by lot from among the unmarried male emigrants. This point being at length settled, a packet of refreshments, consisting of cold meat and ship’s bread, was served out to each member of the expedition; the largest of the quarter boats was lowered and brought to the gangway, and the whole party bundled down the side into her and pushed off amid the half-envious cheers of the rest. Just before they started I drew Polson aside and gave him my views upon the manner in which I considered that the exploration ought to be conducted, and impressed upon him the fact that he was the leader of the expedition and must exact the strictest obedience from every member of it; and this he promised to do.

I allowed the exploring party to get fairly away from the ship, and then, causing the second quarter boat to be lowered, sent four hands down into her with the lead-line, followed them myself, and then headed after the first boat toward the harbour which I suspected to exist inside the two headlands first discovered by Polson, my object being to make a rough survey of this harbour before attempting to take the ship into it. The fact that I would allow only four seamen to accompany me occasioned some further discontent among the number who were obliged to remain aboard the ship; but I cared nothing for this. I was quite determined that no unnecessary risks of any kind should be run; and since these people appeared unable to think for themselves, and Wilde seemed to have as little idea as the rest of them of what precautions ought to be observed, I just resolved to think for them, at least until they were all safely ashore and I could feel that I was no longer responsible for their safety. After that they might take as many risks as they pleased.

As we in the second boat neared the two headlands which formed the approach to the inner harbour they assumed a much more imposing appearance than they had presented from the deck of the ship, rising sheer out of the water to a height of nearly or quite two hundred feet, in the form of precipitous cliffs of dark rock which sloped away on either hand until, at a distance of about a mile to right and left, they dwindled away to nothing and were lost in the verdant slope that rose gently from the outside beach.

I started sounding as soon as the boat pushed off from the ship’s side, and, instead of heading directly for the inner harbour, pursued a zigzag course athwart and toward the mouth of it, each arm of the zigzag measuring about half a mile. I did this in the hope of discovering any hidden dangers that might perchance lurk in the track of the ship on her way into the inner harbour; but we found none, and the floor of the lagoon seemed to be as smooth and almost as level as that of a ballroom, sloping very gradually up from a deep five fathoms where the ship lay to four and a half fathoms between the two headlands.

But when at length we got fairly in between those two headlands, what a surprise was sprung upon us! I had expected—and indeed the utmost extent of my hopes had been—that inside those two heads we might find a snug little cove just large enough to allow the ship room to swing in; but, to the astonishment of us all, when we got inside we found ourselves in a splendid landlocked basin, measuring about two and a half miles long by about one and three-quarter miles wide, by far the largest part of the area lying to the south-westward of the entrance.

On the inner side the two heads presented very much the same appearance as they did outside; that is to say, they sprang sheer out of the water as practically vertical cliffs, gradually decreasing in height until, at about a distance of a mile from the harbour entrance, they disappeared altogether, merging into the general, gentle, upward slope of the land from the water’s edge. Where the cliffs ended a beautiful sandy beach began, having a sweep of fully three miles round the back of the basin. It was on this beach that the exploring party had landed; and when we entered the basin there was the other boat, her stem hauled up on the beach, and her painter made fast to an oar, the loom of which had been driven deep into the sand, instead of lying off, afloat, with two hands in her as boatkeepers, ready for any emergency, as I had directed. It was a little annoying to find one’s instructions disregarded so flagrantly; but I reminded myself that, with the berthing of the ship in the basin, I should have accomplished all that had been demanded of me, and henceforth must expect to be treated as a nonentity. That, of course, would leave me quite free to think out some plan whereby to effect my escape and return to civilisation; for Wilde’s Socialistic doctrines did not in the least appeal to me, and not even the prospect of passing the remainder of my life upon that beautiful and fertile island could reconcile me to them.

However, there was plenty of time before me in which to work out a plan of escape; my present business was to ascertain whether the Basin—as I already named it in my own mind—afforded safe anchorage for the ship; I therefore resumed the task of sounding, working pretty regularly all over the area of it, with the result that the floor was found to slope upward very gradually until within about half a mile of low-water mark, when the slope became comparatively steep. So far as my somewhat cursory survey went there seemed to be no submerged rocks, shoals, or other dangers in that beautiful landlocked harbour to imperil the safety of the ship; but in order to make assurance doubly sure I landed on the inner beach and ascended the south-west head—from which the best view of the basin was to be obtained—when, the sun having by this time climbed nearly to the zenith and his rays striking down almost perpendicularly into the water, I was able to see a considerable portion of the sandy floor of the harbour through the crystalline depths of its waters; but neither in this way could I discover any sign of danger or obstruction. I therefore concluded that the ship might be brought inside the Heads, and anchored pretty closely to the beach, without much apprehension of harm happening to her, especially as there did not appear to be more than eighteen inches rise of tide in this particular part of the ocean.

From the situation which I now occupied I was of course afforded the best view of the island that I had yet obtained; and truth compels me to say that the more I saw of it the better I liked it. There should be no lack of fresh water on the island, for even from my point of observation there were at least a dozen small streams in sight, and doubtless there were others beyond the range of my vision. Then the trees upon it seemed to number some hundreds of thousands, a very fair proportion of which appeared to be of large size, and the timber of which would probably be found useful for a multiplicity of purposes. It was a veritable garden of flowers of the most varied and beautiful shapes and hues; butterflies of enormous size and the most gorgeous colours flitted here and there; bees hovered over the multitudinous blossoms, busily engaged in collecting their store of honey; many birds were seen, some of then of marvellously beautiful plumage; while, as to fruit, wild strawberries and raspberries flourished in profusion even upon the headland on which I was standing, and which boasted no other vegetation than grass and low bushes. The shores of the basin offered an absolutely ideal site for a town, although the ground there might perhaps be considered rather low; and for my own part I practically made up my mind that, while I would stick to the ship as long as I might be permitted to do so, if I were compelled to remain on the island for any length of time I would endeavour to secure a plot of land on the weather side of the island, and about halfway up the side of the mountain.

One of the most remarkable facts connected with the island, that served to confirm me in the conviction that it was uninhabited, was the extraordinary and absolute fearlessness of man which the birds and other living things exhibited. They flitted about us, and settled within reach of our hands, and numbers of them might have been captured had I permitted it; but I pointed out to the men who accompanied me the absolute uselessness as well as cruelty of such a proceeding, and contrived to convince them that a great deal more pleasure was to be derived from the sight of these beautiful creatures, alive and flying about in perfect freedom and fearlessness, than from the possession of a few of their dead and stuffed skins.

Having at length learned as much as was possible in such a brief visit to this island paradise, and having also fully made up my mind as to the precise spot in the basin where the Mercury should be moored, I summoned my boat’s crew to follow me, and, descending to the beach, got into our boat and pulled back to the ship, just in time for dinner.

Polson being ashore with the explorers, the cabin party at dinner consisted only of Miss Hartley, Tudsbery, and myself; and it was only natural that my two companions should be eager to learn what impression a nearer view of the island had produced upon me, although I could not help thinking that there was a something suggestive of apprehension or distaste in the questions which the girl put to me. I took but little notice of it at the moment, however; for I was thinking more about the task of moving the ship than of satisfying the curiosity of my companions, who, I considered, would doubtless have an opportunity on the morrow to learn for themselves all that they desired to know.

I had so completely made up my mind that there was no reason why the ship should not at once be taken into the basin, that as soon as dinner was over I gave the carpenter instructions to muster the hands and heave short, the news that the ship was about to enter the basin producing a sufficient number of voluntary helpers from among the emigrants to render the task of walking the ship up to her anchor an easy one, despite the fact that the exploring party left us five seamen short. Then, the seamen who remained on board having loosed and set the three topsails, jib, and spanker, we broke out the anchor, cast the ship with her head to the southward for a short stretch in the lagoon, in order to get a fair run in between the Heads, then roused the anchor up to the bows, and catted it.

By the time that this was done we were far enough to the southward to enable us to point our jibboom straight for the fairway between the Heads—the northernmost of which slightly overlapped the other—when we tacked ship and bore away for the entrance, with the emigrants crowding the waist, on both sides of the ship, eager to see their new home at somewhat closer quarters. A quarter of an hour later we swept in between the two towering headlands, with sufficient way on the ship to carry us through the belt of calm under the lee of the northernmost Head, and the interior of the Basin, in all its beauty, lay spread out like a picture before us. Loud ejaculations of delight proclaimed the pleasure which the sight gave to the emigrants, several of whom turned their faces toward the poop, and in unmistakable language hinted the hope that they would now be allowed to go ashore without further delay. Once fairly inside the Head, the helm was starboarded and the ship was headed for a sort of bay in the southern extremity of the basin, the topsail halyards were let go, the jib hauled down, and the spanker brailed in, and with the way that she still had on her the Mercury slowly drifted to the spot which I had chosen as her final berth, and the anchor was let go, in three and a half fathoms of water.

I am afraid I earned a certain amount of unpopularity by steadfastly refusing to allow anyone to leave the ship until the explorers should have returned, but the refusal was part of my policy of extreme caution, of leaving nothing to chance, and of taking no risks of any kind, and I adhered to it, explaining my reasons, and, I think, convincing the majority that I was right.

With the mooring of the Mercury in the berth which I had chosen for her inside the Basin, I considered my task and my responsibility at an end; and, seating myself in a basket chair on the poop, beneath the awning, I disposed myself to begin thinking out some plan for the ordering of my own future conduct. But I had scarcely settled myself comfortably when I was joined by Grace Hartley, who strove to conceal a somewhat embarrassed manner, and the obvious fact that she had something on her mind, behind an attempt at light and frivolous conversation. I endured this as long as I could; but at length the girl’s preoccupation became so marked that I interrupted her somewhat unceremoniously by saying:

“Pray excuse me for breaking in upon your entertaining remarks, Miss Hartley, but do you not think you had better come to the point, and have done with it? You want to say something to me, and do not quite know how to begin. Is not that the fact?”

“Yes, Mr Troubridge, it is,” she acknowledged; “although how you managed to guess it, I am sure I don’t know.”

“Well,” said I, “let it suffice that I have guessed it. Now, go ahead and just tell me what it is.”

The girl hesitated for some time, and at length said, with a laugh of embarrassment:

“I know quite well what it is that I want to say; but my difficulty is that I do not know how you will take it, for I have only a very hazy idea what are your own ideas upon the subject.”

“Has it anything to do with Gurney, by any chance?” I asked.

“Well, yes, it has—in a way,” she answered. “The fact is, Mr Troubridge, that now, when that horrid man Wilde’s scheme seems to be nearing fruition, I am beginning to realise that I am in a very awkward and difficult position; and I am feeling very anxious. I have heard much talk, lately, that has greatly alarmed me; and I have been compelled to ask myself what is to be the outcome of this attempt to found a colony upon Socialistic lines. I admit that I have never very closely studied the doctrine of Socialism; but if Wilde’s views are to be accepted as its gospel, my common sense tells me that the experiment which we are about to make can result in nothing but a ghastly fiasco. The text of his preaching is Social Equality. Equality! There has never been, and never will be such a thing so long as this world endures and mankind is what it is; and all attempts to make and keep men equal are foredoomed to end in failure, even as they did in the days of the French Revolution. I foresee that one of the first results which will follow such an attempt here will be discontent; then will speedily follow dissension, and, finally, anarchy; and I look forward to that condition of things with the utmost dread. For anarchy means lawlessness, violence, the adoption of the doctrine that Might is Right; and in the midst of such a state of things what will happen to us unfortunate women?”

“Ah!” said I. “That is a question which I should think will affect you very closely, although, judging merely from what I have seen of the others, I doubt whether it will greatly trouble them. I imagine that, even if anarchy should come, they will know pretty well how to take care of themselves, even as the French Revolutionary women did. But what has all this got to do with Gurney?”

“Well, it concerns him in this way,” the girl answered. “He thinks upon this subject precisely as I do, and foresees—as I do—that grave troubles for us all loom in the not-far-distant future. Of course you know very little about George Gurney, Mr Troubridge; to you he is merely one of the crew of this ship; but,” with some little embarrassment which I very readily understood, “I have seen a great deal of him of late, and I assure you that he is a very remarkable man, intelligent, well-educated, refined; indeed, as a matter of fact, I believe—although he has never told me so—that he was born to a very different station in life from that which he now occupies. I may as well acknowledge that it is to conversations I have had with him that I have come to see things in the light that I have endeavoured to make clear to you; and it is partly at his suggestion that I finally decided to mention the subject to you, and endeavour to obtain your views upon it.”

“My views, Miss Hartley,” said I, “are in all essentials identical with your own—and Gurney’s—and, if you think fit, you may tell him so.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr Troubridge!” exclaimed my companion. “I will certainly do so, for I am sure that he will be glad to hear it. Of course you understand that this conversation of ours was intended to be private? You will not mention to others what—?”

“I will not,” I promised; “make your mind quite easy upon that point. As a matter of fact I am very much obliged to you for opening your mind to me; I will give what you have said my most serious consideration; and it may be that, a little later on, I shall be very glad to have a little further conversation with you upon this most interesting subject.”

Chapter Twelve.

A landing is effected.

The explorers, weary but jubilant, bubbling over with enthusiastic encomiums upon the beauty, fertility, and resources of the island, and loaded down with samples of the numerous fruits and vegetable products which they had discovered, arrived on board the ship just as the sun was sinking beyond the southern shoulder of the peak. Polson reported that, upon landing, they had gone to the westward, and thence north, east, and south, spreading themselves out in such a manner as to cover the widest possible extent of country while still retaining touch with each other, and had carefully examined the entire coast line of the island in search of indications of the presence of natives, but finding none; so they had come to the conclusion that they might safely assume the island to be uninhabited, and therefore in that respect, as in all others, eminently suited to their requirements. They had found two harbours, in addition to the Basin, one—that which we had observed on the preceding evening—toward the north-western extremity of the island, and the other—of nearly the same area as the Basin—on the northern shore; but they considered both these harbours to be inferior to the Basin, from the fact that the one on the north-west coast was practically an open roadstead, exposed to westerly winds, while the other, although pretty well sheltered from all except north-westerly winds—which seldom blew in that latitude—was shallow, the fringing reef entirely filling it. They described the island as abundantly watered, having encountered and crossed no less than twenty-seven streams and brooks during the day; and there did not appear to be a sterile spot anywhere upon it, except just the bald head of the peak. Wilde was of opinion that the island was rich in minerals, traces of both iron and coal having been met with, while outcrops of granite and a very beautiful marble, probably exceedingly rich in lime, had also been encountered. This was the first rough report of the explorers, given immediately upon their return to the ship, which Wilde undertook to supplement in an address which he proposed to deliver from the poop after supper.

Accordingly, at the conclusion of the meal, all hands, emigrants and seamen alike, mustered in the waist and on the quarter-deck, finding seats where they could, some of them on the rail with their feet resting on the plank-sheer, some on the after hatch, and the rest on the deck planks, while Polson, Tudsbery, Grace Hartley, and I disposed ourselves upon the poop, near enough to hear all that was said; Wilde placing himself in the centre of the fore end of the poop, where he could be seen and heard by everybody. I am bound to admit that, as a speaker, the ex-schoolmaster acquitted himself fairly well. His grammar was unexceptionable, as might be reasonably expected; his choice of words admirable, and his mode of expressing himself easy, yet precise; while he seemed to have the gift of arranging the points of his subject symmetrically, and in such a manner as instantly to catch and hold the attention of his hearers. He began by recounting in detail the history of the day’s doings, describing the route taken, the nature of the country passed over, and the various products met with. Some of his descriptive passages dealing with the beauties of the scenery—the loveliness of the wooded glens, each with its tiny streamlet flowing over a rocky bed, with here and there a romantic, tree-shaded waterfall, its jagged margin adorned with rich growths of rare and beautiful ferns; the wide, park-like expanses of greensward dotted with magnificent trees; the tangled brakes, gorgeous with strange and wonderful orchids and flowering shrubs and creepers; the countless fruit-bearing trees and shrubs loaded with luscious fruits and berries; the miles of coconut-palms bordering the shore; the gaily-plumaged birds with their quaint and sometimes discordant cries; the brilliant-winged butterflies—were both picturesque and poetical. There were neither savages, ferocious animals—or, indeed, animals of any kind—nor reptiles on the island, so far as the explorers had been able to discover, he said; and as for the extent of the island, it was sufficient to provide each individual of the party, including the children, with ample subsistence for the rest of his or her life.

Then he proceeded to sketch out—for about the thousandth time—the principle upon which the community was to be governed. It was to be subject to laws which were to be enacted from time to time by a council of seven—including himself—of which he was to be president for life in virtue of the fact that the whole scheme and idea was of his originating, the remaining six members of council to be elected once every three years. There were to be no distinctions of rank or class; all were to be absolutely equal; there was to be no such thing as private property, everything being held in common; everybody was to labour diligently for the benefit of the entire community; and the natural increase due to every person’s labour was to be delivered into a sort of general store, or warehouse, and apportioned out in accordance with rules to be framed by the council. There was a great deal more said that night to the same effect, some of the statements being received with rapturous applause—chiefly by the lazy and ne’er-do-well members of the party; but I could see that although all hands had in the first instance jumped readily enough at the prospect of an easy and luxurious life, free—as they thought—from all restraint, in a land of eternal summer, there were those among them to whom the Socialistic doctrine of perfect equality and all things in common was already distinctly distasteful; and I believed that if I could but school myself sufficiently in the exercise of that patience which is said to be a virtue, I should hear more of that distaste, and also of other things that might be advantageous to me in my determination to effect my escape from a community with the aims of which I was entirely out of sympathy.

Wilde closed his discourse with the announcement that on the morrow all hands would be permitted to go on shore, immediately after breakfast, to view the island and sample its products for themselves, returning to the ship at sunset, in time for supper, after which another meeting would be held for the purpose of electing the six members of council, who would, upon election, immediately proceed to frame laws for the good government of the community, and also make arrangements for its settlement upon the island. Accordingly, soon after sunrise on the following morning, the emigrants once more made their appearance on deck in holiday attire, all impatient for the moment to arrive when the boats should be brought to the gangway to convey them to those green and bosky glades, which had spread themselves so alluringly before their gaze for the preceding forty-eight hours. So eager were they that it was only with the utmost difficulty we were able to persuade them to go below again, until the crew had had time to wash decks and perform the ship’s toilet for the day. My determination not to forgo this daily duty drew from Wilde an acrimonious remonstrance; but his objections were promptly overruled by Polson and Tudsbery, who, I now discovered, to my great satisfaction, were, with most of the crew, disposed still to leave all matters strictly pertaining to the ship, and her rule and governance, entirely in my hands.

“Wilde don’t know nothin’ about a ship, Mr Troubridge—how should he?” explained Polson to me; “and if he was let to have his way he might start pullin’ of her to pieces for the sake of her timber and metal.”

“As likely as not he would,” said I. “But you men must never permit that, Polson; at least, not for some time to come. There are a dozen ways in which she may yet be found eminently useful. For instance, beautiful and altogether suitable as this island appears for your purpose, who is to say that it does not possess some subtle peculiarity of climate rendering it unfit for the abode of Europeans; and what sort of condition would you be in if such should prove to be the case, and you had no ship to which to retreat, and in which to seek another island?”

“Very true, sir,” cut in the carpenter. “I hadn’t thought of that; but there’s the chance of it, all the same, now that you comes to mention it.”

As a matter of fact, however, it was not the above reason that influenced me in the least in my desire to ensure the preservation of the ship, for, although I had mentioned it, I did not for a moment believe that the contingency would ever arise; but, like Grace Hartley and Gurney, I had long since subjected Wilde’s theories to careful examination, and decided that there was nothing in them to satisfy a man possessed of a healthy ambition to make his mark in the world; I therefore wanted to keep open for myself a way of escape; and no better way could possibly be afforded than by the ship.

By one bell in the forenoon watch—half-past eight—breakfast was over and everybody was once more on deck and clustering about the gangways, waiting for the boats to be brought alongside. This was soon done, every boat belonging to the ship having been got into the water and veered astern the first thing that morning. But now another delay occurred, most vexatious to the impatient emigrants; for every one of the boats—excepting the quarter boats, which had been kept tight by filling them about a quarter full of water every morning—proved so leaky, their seams having opened through long exposure to the air, that they had quietly swamped in the interval between six o’clock and breakfast-time. The swamping process, however, had not occupied more than a quarter of an hour, since which time the submerged boats had been rapidly “taking up”; therefore when, soon afterward, they were baled out, it was found that they had already become tight enough to make the short passage to the shore; and by ten o’clock the ship was empty, save for Polson and two seamen who had been included in the exploring party of the previous day, and who were now willing to remain aboard and look after her.

I went ashore in the last boat to leave the ship; and, upon stepping ashore, at once set my face toward the peak, with the intention of ascending it. The nearer slopes ahead of me were thickly dotted with people in little groups, parents and children, or friends, who were bent upon seeing something of the island, certainly, but whose chief aim was an enjoyable picnic. The children were already, for the most part, busily engaged in plucking the many strange and beautiful flowers with which the greensward was thickly dotted; while the parents, eager to sample the various fruits which the island yielded, vainly strove to quicken the youngsters’ pace. There were a few solitary couples straying off by themselves; and among them I presently recognised Gurney and Grace Hartley. Wilde, acting as cicerone to a large party who were evidently anxious to see as much as possible of the island forthwith, was already a long way ahead.

The greensward, which came right down to the beach of coarse coral grit, rose undulatingly at a very gentle slope until within about three-quarters of a mile from the summit of the peak, when the slope became considerably steeper—probably a rise of one in five—to within a couple of hundred feet of the summit, when the slope took an angle of about forty-five degrees. But it must not be imagined that the very gentle slope of which I have spoken was uniform, for it was far from that; on the contrary, I had not advanced much more than half a mile on my way before I came to, first, a slight dip, then a rather stiff rise of a few hundred yards to a kind of ridge, upon surmounting which I found myself upon the edge of a wildly picturesque glen, or ravine, the steep sides of which consisted of finely broken ground interspersed with outcrops of lichen—stained rock and thickly overgrown with a tangle of bushes and flowering shrubs, with here and there a few graceful saplings or a clump of noble shade trees entwined with strange-looking and beautiful orchids. The cool, refreshing, musical sound of running water came up from the depths of the glen, although the stream itself was not visible from where I stood, while the subdued roar of a distant waterfall strongly tempted me to swerve from my path and follow the upward course of the glen. I surrendered myself to the temptation, rather erroneously arguing that every foot of rise must necessarily take me so much nearer the summit of the peak, whereas I eventually found that I had diverged almost at right angles to my proper course. But I was richly rewarded for my labour and loss of time, for at the end of a somewhat arduous climb of about twenty minutes I found myself gazing at as romantic and beautiful a bit of scenery as I had ever beheld.

I was in a deep hollow between two hills, the bottom of the hollow forming a rocky basin into which poured the water of a small stream, some ten feet in width, as it tumbled over a broad, rocky ledge some sixty feet above, and came foaming, lace-like, down the moss-grown face of the precipice. The pool, or basin, into which the water fell was some thirty feet in diameter, and apparently about four feet deep, the pebbly bottom showing with startling distinctness through the crystal-clear water. The steep sides of the hollow were grass-grown, with great, rough outcrops of granite rock showing here and there, out of the interstices of which sprang a great variety of beautiful ferns, and were overhung by a magnificent tangle of beautiful trees and bushes growing so thickly together as completely to exclude the sun’s rays, bathing the whole scene in a soft, cool, delicious green twilight.

The water looked so clear, so cool, so altogether tempting, that I decided there and then to treat myself to the luxury of a freshwater bath; I accordingly stripped and sprang in, fully expecting to touch bottom. But, to my astonishment, the pool proved to be fully ten feet deep; moreover the water was icy cold, or appeared to be so in comparison with the tropical heat of the air; I therefore scrambled out as quickly as possible, and, dressing, resumed my ramble, greatly refreshed by my dip.

The hot air was heavy with the smell of wet earth, the spray of the waterfall, the rank vegetation that flourished riotously along the margins of the brook, and the mingled perfumes of a thousand varieties of strange and gorgeously tinted flowers, as I laboriously climbed the steep side of the ravine, after crossing the brook, on my way to the more open country beyond. But this soon changed upon my emerging from the ravine, giving place to the more healthful and invigorating scent of the salt sea breeze that came sweeping over the island and roared among the lofty branches of the trees, among the trunks of which I now wound my upward way.

I had now reached a park-like stretch of country, the surface of which was clad with long, rich, luxuriant grass, thickly dotted with clumps of splendid trees, many of which were of immense height and girth, promising a rich yield of valuable timber, while others blazed with vivid scarlet flowers instead of leaves. These open park-like expanses of country, however, were of comparatively limited extent, the trees for the most part growing closely together, while the space between their trunks was choked with thick undergrowth, consisting of shrubs, bushes, and long, tough, flowering creepers, so densely and inextricably intermingled that it was sometimes impossible to force a way through it, and long dÉtours became necessary in order to make any progress. But there were other spots, again, which conveyed the idea of natural gardens, for in them little else than fruit-bearing trees were to be found, among which I quickly recognised the banana, the plantain, the peach, the orange, the lime, the custard apple, the granadilla, to say nothing of many other kinds to which I was a stranger; while raspberries and strawberries were to be found almost everywhere. And a little later on in my walk I came here and there upon patches of melon plants in all stages, from that in which the blossom was just opening to that of the ripe and perfect fruit. A particularly rich and luscious-flavoured purple grape also appeared to be exceedingly abundant. Needless to say, I sampled these various fruits as freely as discretion permitted, while I filled my pockets with others to serve as dessert to my dinner. This meal I discussed, luxuriously reclining upon a thick bed of soft moss surrounding a spring of deliriously cold fresh water, that came bubbling up out of the earth in the shade of a thick grove of aromatic pines which constituted the last belt of timber before the bare soil surrounding the summit was reached.

Finally, after I had rested long enough to recover in a measure from the fatigue of my unwonted exertions, I left the scented shadow of the pine grove and, emerging into the blistering sunshine, manfully set myself to climb the last three hundred feet of steep, bare ascent that separated me from the highest point of the island.

The reason for the absolute bareness of the cone became apparent the instant that I stepped out of the shadow of the pines, for I immediately plunged ankle-deep in a loose deposit of ashes and pumice-stone that yielded to my tread and slid away under me to such an extent as to make progress almost impossible. But I was determined not to be beaten; and at length, after a full hour’s violent exertion, I found myself, breathless and with my clothing saturated with perspiration, standing, as I had expected, on the lip of the crater of an extinct volcano. The crater was almost mathematically circular in shape, of about a quarter of a mile in internal diameter, and fully five hundred feet deep; the sides of the cup were practically vertical, and everywhere so smooth that I could nowhere discover a spot where a descent into the crater would have been possible, even had I desired to go down into it. But I had no such inclination; for I could see all that I wished from the summit, the internal walls being absolutely bare, while the bottom was simply a lake of stagnant water, apparently not more than a few inches deep.

But if the interior of the crater offered little or nothing to attract the eye, it was far otherwise when I directed my gaze outward. The whole of the island, except the comparatively small strip that was hidden from me by the spreading rim of the crater, lay stretched out beneath me like a map, beautifully executed in relief and tinted by the hand of a master. Its groves, its brakes, its broad park-like expanses, its rocky glens, its picturesque ravines, its sparkling rivulets, its deeply indented coast line, its dazzlingly white beaches, the outline of its fringing reef, ay, and the long thin line of its barrier reef, with its spouting, leaping wall of snowy spray, reaching from north to south, and spreading far into the deep blue of the ocean to the eastward, were visible through that clear air with startling distinctness. Why, I could even detect the evanescent whiteness of the breaking surges far out beyond the barrier reef, where their crests were whipped into foam by the scourging of the fiery breeze. I considered that I commanded a horizon of nearly a hundred and twenty miles in diameter, yet throughout that wide stretch of ocean there was nothing visible save the island, no ship save the Mercury, floating like a tiny toy upon the placid, landlocked surface of the Basin. I keenly searched the horizon in every direction for signs of other land, but nowhere could I detect even the loom of it. We were absolutely alone here in our lovely island Eden; and there was no land in any direction near enough to cause us the slightest uneasiness as to incursions of hostile savages.

Two full hours, by my watch, did I spend upon the summit of the crater, slowly sauntering round its rim, feasting my eyes upon the surpassing beauties of the scene beneath and around me, and also sketching a rough map of the island for future use. Then, sated with enjoyment, and more than half-reconciled to the possibility that I might be compelled to spend the remainder of my life amid such glorious surroundings, I set about to effect my descent and return to the ship, following a route which I had mentally mapped out, as it seemed to promise easier going than the one by which I had ascended. Taking my time, choosing my ground, and winding hither and thither to avoid obstacles, I arrived at the beach just in good time to go off aboard with the last boatload of holiday makers, all of whom, though hot and weary with their long day’s ramble, were full of enthusiasm at the prospect of making their homes on so lovely and fertile a spot and in such a perfect climate.

At eight o’clock that night Wilde ascended the poop and, assuming the direction of affairs quite as a matter of course, gave orders for all hands to assemble in the waist in order that the business of electing the members of council—who, in conjunction with himself, were to frame the laws and order the affairs of the community—might be proceeded with. He opened the proceedings by explaining in detail precisely what the duties of the council were to be, incidentally mentioning the fact that, in consideration of the onerous and responsible character of those duties, the members would be absolved from the performance of any and every other kind of work. He dwelt at some length upon the qualifications which he considered indispensable for the efficient discharge of the duties of a member of council, enumerating, among others, wisdom, discretion, organising ability, and the faculty of anticipating and providing for the future needs of the community; and then himself proceeded to propose the six persons whom he considered best fitted to fill the office, all of them being chosen from among the emigrants!

At this stage of the proceedings Gurney promptly rose and intervened. He said that he fully agreed with the chairman both as to the necessity for extreme care in the choice of persons to fill positions of such heavy responsibility, and also as to the qualifications required in the holders of such positions. But, while he had nothing to say against the persons proposed by the chairman, he was of opinion that there was one person in the ship who, despite his extreme youth, was at least as fully qualified as any other individual among them to fill satisfactorily the position of a member of council, and who, moreover, had fully earned the distinction by piloting them to this beautiful island. He presumed that he need not add that he referred to young Mr Troubridge, to whose exceptional skill as a seaman and a navigator they all owed so much!

These remarks were greeted with so much enthusiasm that it was with the utmost difficulty I succeeded in making it understood—to Wilde’s manifest relief—that for certain good and sufficient reasons I must decline to accept the proffered office. But, I continued, it seemed to me not only a mistake but distinctly invidious that the seamen should be entirely excluded from the governing body; and I considered that, in common fairness to them, two at least of their number—to be chosen by themselves—ought to be included.

This proposal also was loudly applauded; and, after a great deal of rather heated discussion, Polson and Gurney, as representative of the officers and crew of the ship, were duly elected members of council; the other four being William Fell, once a solicitor’s clerk; Henry Burgess, lately a colliery agent; John Monroe, formerly a builder; and Samuel Hilary, late agricultural labourer. These four last, as may be readily understood, owed their election not so much to their superior qualifications as to the fact that they were red-hot Socialists, full of plans to enable everybody to enjoy a maximum amount of comfort at the cost of a minimum of labour; and they proved the sincerity of their doctrine by securing their own election to posts which freed them from the necessity to labour for themselves.

Chapter Fourteen.

The critical moment approaches.

I watched the tall, good-looking, well-spoken sailor, and the slim, willowy figure of his sweetheart gradually vanish amid the deep shadows of the bushes that bordered the path leading downward from the Head; and then, oblivious of the peril of rheumatism, seated myself upon the least dew-sodden boulder that I could find, and proceeded to think out the momentous communication that had just been made to me.

It was a glorious night. The full moon, some thirty degrees above the eastern horizon, flashed the whole sea beneath her, outside the reef, into a vast sheet of tumbling liquid silver, while her beams fell in a long line of tremulous radiance upon the placid waters of the lagoon, right up to the edge of the cliff upon which I sat. The sky was cloudless, and toward the zenith and away down in the west some of the larger stars beamed with that soft yet brilliant effulgence that is only to be seen within the tropics, but in her own neighbourhood the stronger light of the moon had eclipsed them all save the planet Venus that hung near her, glowing like a silver lamp. So brilliant were the moonbeams that even the ants, beetles, and other small creeping things that ran about my feet were distinctly visible, as were the tints of the flowers that bloomed everywhere, and some of which had the peculiarity of opening only at night. A soft and gentle breeze was blowing in from the sea, just strongly enough to stir and rustle the grasses and foliage about me, and to bring to my ears the deep and ceaseless thunder of the surf that beat everlastingly upon the distant reef.

The greater part of the Basin was still in shadow, including that where the Mercury lay, but the moon was high enough for her rays to reach the upper spars of the ship almost down to her topsail yards, and the dew-wetted spars and rigging gleamed as though inlaid with wires of silver. The settlement, temporarily built on the inner shore of the Basin, was almost as distinctly visible as though it were daylight, its scattered lights gleaming yellow through the gauze-like mistiness of the dew-laden atmosphere; and from it the slopes and undulations of the island delicately receded, until at the peak they assumed almost the ethereal softness of clouds. It was a glorious scene that the island presented, slumbering langorously under the brilliant rays of the tropical moon, more enchanting in some respects than when viewed in the garish light of the sun; and so strong was the enticement of its beauty upon me that, but for the dull cramping influence of the doctrines accepted by the settlers upon which to frame the guiding rules of their lives, I could without very much difficulty have reconciled myself to the idea of a sojourn there for the remainder of my days.

But I had already perceived unmistakable evidences of the blighting effect which was being steadily produced upon certain members of the community by the consciousness—which I think some of them were only now beginning to fully realise—that industry and individual effort were to count for nothing, and that the lazy, useless units were to live a life of inglorious ease at the expense of the hard workers. I foresaw that a time was coming when deadly strife would rage between the two sections; and the prospect was not enticing enough to induce me to throw in my lot with the rest. Yet, if I did not, my life would be in danger; for it scarcely needed Gurney’s communication of an hour before to impress upon me the conviction that, sooner or later, Wilde and his followers would insist upon my giving in my adhesion to them or—taking the consequences of refusal. And it did not need the gift of the seer to forecast the precise character of those consequences. I had scouted the idea of deliberate cold-blooded murder when Gurney had suggested it to me, yet I had not forgotten that I had already been threatened with death as the alternative to undertaking the navigation of the ship, during the quest for a suitable island upon which to settle; and I had very little doubt that they would have carried out their threat had I persisted in my refusal.

Now I was again threatened with it. There seemed to be but two alternatives—submission or flight; and it was but the work of a moment with me to decide that flight was the more acceptable of the two. But how to accomplish it? I thought of the longboat; but to fit her for a long voyage in the open ocean, with any hope of accomplishing it, would need an amount of preparation that could not possibly escape notice. And to be detected in the making of such preparations would be to arouse such suspicion as must inevitably result in the complete defeat of my plans, followed perhaps by other consequences of a still more serious character; while to neglect them and attempt flight in the boat, just as she was, would be madness—an expedient only to be resorted to under stress of the direst extremity. Hour after hour I sat there racking my brains in quest of some practicable plan offering a reasonable prospect of success; but could think of nothing; the scheme upon which I finally settled being only one degree less mad than that of venturing to sea in the unprepared longboat. Such as it was, however, I determined to submit it to Gurney’s consideration, and hear what he thought of it.

Accordingly, watching my opportunity, I contrived to get hold of Grace Hartley, on the following evening, after supper, and whispered to her that I intended to walk up to the Head again, and would be glad if she and Gurney would follow me to the spot where we had had our previous talk together. To which she replied that they would certainly do so; and half an hour later the pair joined me.

“Well, Mr Troubridge,” exclaimed Gurney, as we met, “I hope this summons means that you have succeeded in hitting upon some scheme which will enable us all three to get away from here without delay; for I may as well tell you that the council have to-day decided to complete the loading of the Mercury and dispatch her to Canton forthwith. And, although Wilde did not say so in so many words, I have every reason to believe that the pretty little programme which I sketched out to you last night is to be carried through.”

“So much the greater reason why you and I, Gurney, should make up our minds at once what is to be done,” said I.

“Yes; you are right,” answered Gurney. “For I have not yet told you the whole of the story, nor how it affects Grace and me. I, as one of the council, am to go in the ship, ostensibly for the purpose of transacting the commercial part of the business—the disposal of the ship and cargo, the purchase of another vessel, and of a cargo of tea, and so on; but actually—as I have only too much reason to fear—in order that, during my absence, Wilde may have an opportunity to force Grace to marry him.”

“I see,” said I. “Well, Gurney, the only scheme that I have thus far been able to think of is of so mad and desperate a character that I gravely doubt whether you will feel justified in having anything to do with it.”

“Let us hear what it is, Mr Troubridge,” answered Gurney. “It will have to be something pretty desperate to choke Grace and me off it; for I can tell you we are growing more than a trifle desperate ourselves.”

“Well,” said I, “to put the scheme baldly, I simply propose that we three shall run off with the ship, sail her to Sydney, hand her over to the authorities, telling the whole truth, and take our chance of what may follow. I doubt whether they would deal hardly with either of us. Miss Hartley is of course quite blameless; they would never dream of holding her in the least degree responsible for the theft of the ship and cargo; nor do I believe they would be very hard upon me, seeing that Wilde and the rest compelled me to fall in with their plans. And as for yourself, the fact that you had assisted me to restore the ship to her proper owners would probably be accepted as a set-off against your share of the crime of stealing the ship, especially in view of the fact that we had brought in a cargo of sandalwood in place of the much less valuable cargo which the settlers have appropriated. Now, what do you think of it?”

“Well,” answered Gurney slowly, as he turned my plan over in his mind, “the proposal that two men and a girl shall attempt to navigate a ship of eight hundred tons from here to Sydney—a matter of four thousand miles or more, I suppose—has certainly, as you say, more than a suggestion of madness about it. Yet I believe that we could do it, Mr Troubridge—I was in Plymouth Sound, a trifle over two years ago, when a ship nearly as big as the Mercury came in. She was from Rio; and the second mate, an apprentice, and one ordinary seaman comprised the whole of her crew. She sailed from Rio with her full complement; and when she was only three days at sea an outbreak of yellow fever occurred aboard her. First one, and then another, and another of her crew was struck down; but the skipper would not put back. He had a fair wind, and he insisted that the men’s best chance of shaking off the fever lay in keeping the ship at sea. And they did so, although the men continued to die until, by the time that they reached the latitude of the Azores, only the three I have named remained alive. Meanwhile, as the crew dwindled and the ship became short-handed, they snugged her down until at last they had nothing set but the close-reefed fore and main topsails and the fore topmast staysail, and under that canvas she entered the Sound, hove-to, and signalled for assistance. Oh yes, I am sure we could do it, provided, of course, that we kept our health; and we should have to take our chance of that. It would be hard work, certainly, but there are two of us, both fairly strong, and—as the second mate of that ship I told you of answered, when he was asked how they managed—one can do a lot of work with a tackle or two. And as to how the authorities might be disposed to regard my share of the stealing of the ship, I would take my chance of that. Gracie here can bear witness that I was never in favour of the scheme, and only joined in it with a good grace because there seemed nothing else to be done. Now, as to the best time for making the attempt, what is your idea about that?”

“Well,” said I, “in view of the fact that it has actually been decided to send the ship to sea, I think it will be well to wait until the cargo is all in, and the hatches on. That will give us an opportunity to get all our traps aboard without exciting suspicion. Then, on the night of the day prior to the sailing of the ship, we three must go off to her, slip her cable, make sail—as much as we can manage—and trust that we may be able to reach open water before our flight is discovered. If the completion of the loading can by any means be delayed until the moon rises about an hour after midnight, so much the better.”

“Oh, as to that!” answered Gurney; “the deliberate way of working that the people have got into will make it quite a week before the loading is finished, which will bring moonrise to somewhere about the time you mention. The moon will have taken off to about her third quarter by then; but even so she will give us light enough to find our way out through the reef, which is all that we need trouble about.”

“Precisely,” I agreed. “Then am I to understand that you and Miss Hartley definitely agree to throw in your lot with me in this desperate attempt?”

“Yes, Mr Troubridge, you certainly may,” answered Gurney. “At least,” he corrected himself, “I can answer for myself. And as to Gracie here, what say you, little woman?”

“I say, of course, that I would infinitely prefer to go with you and Mr Troubridge,” answered the girl. “The only thing is,” she continued, “that I am afraid I shall be a frightful trouble to you both. And yet I don’t know; I can cook your meals for you; and I can steer the ship in fine weather, can’t I, George?”

“Ay, that you can, as well as any man in the ship,” answered Gurney. “I taught her myself, Mr Troubridge, long before you appeared upon the scene.”

“I foresee, Miss Hartley,” said I, “that, so far from being a trouble to us, you will be absolutely indispensable to our success. And now, Gurney, I think we had better part; for, under all the circumstances, I believe it will scarcely be wise for you and me to be seen very much together. Watch the progress of events in the council, and let me know if anything should transpire of a character likely to interfere with our plans.”

On the evening of the following day, upon my return to the settlement from the scene of the surveying operations, I found awaiting me a formal intimation from the council of its determination forthwith to complete the loading of the Mercury and dispatch her to sea at the earliest possible moment; and I was instructed to deliver over all documents and papers of every kind relating to the survey of the island to my coadjutor, Meadows, who would henceforth have sole charge of the survey; also, I was to proceed on board the ship on the following morning, accompanied by the men—former members of the crew—named in the margin, for the purpose of submitting the hull, spars, sails, and rigging to a thorough overhaul, in order to ensure that the ship was fit and ready in all respects to undertake a voyage to China; and to prepare an inventory of such provisions and stores as might be required for the voyage. And, lastly, when these orders had been carried out, I was to report in person to the council and receive my final instructions relative to the voyage.

I found that my crew was to consist of twenty men, all told, namely, eighteen seamen, one cook, and a cabin steward; and of the eighteen seamen Gurney was to act in the capacity of chief mate, and Tudsbery, the carpenter, as second. Gurney, being a member of the council, was excused from participation in the overhauling operations, Polson—who was also a member of the council—being sent in his stead. I could not, at the time, quite understand the reason for this somewhat singular arrangement; for I did not for an instant accept the official explanation that Polson, from his former association with the ship as boatswain, was considered to possess a more intimate knowledge than Gurney of the minutiae of the ship’s equipment. However, it was all made clear to me afterwards.

With these twenty men, then, I proceeded on board the Mercury on a certain morning, and proceeded to give her and all her gear a thorough overhaul, although I knew it to be simply a waste of time and energy, the overhaul having already been made, all defective or doubtful gear replaced, and the sails loosed and aired once every week since. Still, I did not in the least object, for it was all to my personal advantage that if perchance any trifling defect had been thus far overlooked, it should now be made good. While the rest of the hands, under Polson and Tudsbery, were going systematically to work upon the overhauling process I set the cook and steward to work to take careful stock of the contents of the lazarette, with the object of ensuring that there should be a sufficiency of provisions to last us through the voyage. I also had the water tanks emptied, and filled up with pure spring water. And while all this was being done a strong gang was put to the task of bringing down the sandalwood, loading it into the ship’s boats, and bringing it alongside, when it was carefully stowed in the hold, the object being to so stow it as to make the ship receive the utmost possible quantity for which she had capacity.

On the fourth day the overhaul of the ship was completed; and on the morning of the fifth day I presented myself before the council, to hand in my report and receive my full instructions. The report was a very simple document, merely informing the council that the final overhaul had been most carefully executed; that no defects of any description had been discovered; that the supply of provisions in the lazarette had been found to be sufficient for the proposed voyage; and that I was ready to proceed to sea at a moment’s notice. The report was received with a formal expression of the council’s satisfaction; and I was then informed that as it was anticipated that the loading of the ship would be completed on the morrow, I was to make every preparation for the sailing of the ship on the day afterward, when the crew would be sent on board immediately after breakfast, and when I was to present myself before the council for my final instructions.

I left the apartment that had been dignified with the name of council chamber exceedingly well satisfied with what had transpired, and especially so at the information that the crew were not to join the ship until the day of sailing. For this was precisely the point upon which I had been experiencing a good deal of anxiety of late. For this reason. I was most anxious that the ship should go to sea with her hatches on, and the longboat at least properly stowed. But, on the other hand, I greatly feared that when matters had reached this point the crew would be ordered aboard, say on the evening of the day preceding the sailing of the ship. And, if this should happen, my plan of making off with the ship must almost inevitably fail, for it would be practically impossible for Gurney and myself to overpower the remaining nineteen of the crew, who, apart from other considerations, would certainly have their suspicions aroused as soon as Grace Hartley’s presence on board should be discovered, as it soon must be.

I shrewdly suspected that this arrangement relative to the embarkation of the crew at the last moment prior to the sailing of the ship must be due to Gurney, who would, of course, perceive quite as clearly as myself how vital to our success such an arrangement must be, and I tried to get a word with him to ascertain whether this was actually the case. But I found it impossible to do so; and I accordingly devoted the remainder of the day to getting my chest aboard, taking possession of my cabin, and carefully studying the charts with the view of deciding upon the most desirable route to be followed on the voyage to Sydney. Late in the afternoon Gurney and Tudsbery also brought their chests aboard, but even then I was unable to get any private word with the former, because of the constant presence of the latter. Moreover, it appeared to me that Gurney was rather markedly avoiding me, a circumstance that caused me a good deal of uneasiness. But at the last moment, just as all hands were going ashore at the close of the day’s work, my co-adventurer came and stood beside me at the gangway for an instant and, without saying a word, or even looking at me, felt for my hand, and thrust into it what seemed to be a small, tightly folded piece of paper, immediately afterwards passing through the gangway and down the ship’s side. I waited until everybody else had left the deck, and then, carefully thrusting the paper into my breeches pocket, followed.

Arrived at length at the quarters that I occupied while ashore, I drew forth from my pocket what proved to be, as I had suspected from the feel of it, a sheet of paper folded into a very small compass, and, opening it, read as follows:—

“I have just learned, through the merest chance, that it has been arranged that the crew shall go aboard to-morrow, instead of next day, which means that we must act to-night. Please meet me, therefore, among the big rocks on the Basin beach under the South Head as soon after supper as you conveniently can; and, if I should not be there when you arrive, kindly wait for me. I have chosen that spot for our rendezvous on account of its secluded character, and because nobody cares to go there after dark.”

This was awkward news indeed; for, as Gurney had remarked in his communication, it meant that we must act—that is to say, must make our escape—that same night, although the hatches were off, and all the boats were ashore. Of course the fact that the hatches were off was the merest trifle, for Gurney and I could soon clap them on and batten them down; but I did not at all like the idea of going to sea without even so much as a single boat on board; while, of all the boats belonging to the ship, I should most have preferred the longboat, because she was a fine, wholesome boat, and in the event of anything untoward happening we should stand a far better chance in her than in any of the others. However, there was no help for it; it would be better for us to escape without boats than not at all. And yet, when I came to think of it, there was no reason why we should go to sea entirely without boats; we should require one in which to make the passage from the shore to the ship, and surely it ought not to be beyond the power of two men—and a girl—to hoist one of the quarter boats to the davits, for, as Gurney had said, a good deal of work can be done with the aid of a tackle or two. And if we could hoist one quarter boat, why not both? Ay, and it might even be possible to get in the longboat as well, if time and opportunity permitted—but perhaps that was almost too much good luck to expect. Still, I had the germ of a plan in my mind, and I determined to talk to Gurney about it.

Supper, the last meal of the day, was served at seven o’clock, and was over and done with before eight, by which time it was quite dark, save for such light as the stars afforded. While this light was quite sufficient to enable one to see one’s way about the island, it was not powerful enough to reveal objects at any great distance. The conditions were, therefore, quite favourable for our purpose, and when I left the building in which supper had been served I sauntered off in an aimless sort of way, as though going for a stroll toward the peak before turning in for the night. But when I had gone about a quarter of a mile, and had satisfied myself that no one was about—for the settlers were, as a rule, early birds, and usually turned in almost immediately after supper—I made a dÉtour which took me, by way of a slight hollow, down to the inner beach, along which I passed towards the rendezvous mentioned by Gurney. This spot was situated beneath the cliffs on the Basin side of the South Head, where an outcrop of big basalt rocks occurred, and was always of so dark and gloomy and weird a character that it was generally shunned even during the hours of daylight, while at night time nobody ever went near the place if they could possibly avoid it. As I drew near it I once or twice fancied that someone was following me, and, thinking that it might possibly be Gurney, I waited to let him overtake me; but as nobody appeared I supposed I must have been mistaken, and went on again, presently arriving among the rocks. The next moment two figures emerged from among the shadows, and Gurney and his sweetheart stood before me.

Chapter Fifteen.

The great adventure.

“Ah! here you are, Gurney, and Miss Hartley, too,” I exclaimed. “That is good; better, indeed, than I dared hope, for I did not expect to see you, Miss Hartley, at least for another two or three hours.”

“No,” answered Grace; “nor did I expect to be here so soon. But a lucky chance enabled me to get my box out of the hut unobserved, and, George happening to come to my window soon afterward to make his final arrangements, we seized the opportunity and came straight away at once. Mrs Pierson, with whom I have been staying, believes me to be in bed with a bad headache. I made my escape through the window.”

“Excellent!” said I. “Then I suppose we may set to work almost at once, may we not, Gurney?”

“Yes, as soon as you please, Mr Troubridge,” answered Gurney. “But I think it would be wise to give everybody a chance to get home and into bed first. It would be rather awkward if anybody should happen to be out late, taking a walk on the Head, and should see us.”

“That is true; it would,” said I. “Which reminds me that as I came along the beach, on my way here just now, I once or twice had an impression of being followed. I thought that possibly it might be you, and waited for you to overtake me; but nothing came of it.”

“It is a case of ‘guilty conscience’, I expect, Mr Troubridge,” laughed Gurney. “Why should anyone follow you? Nobody can possibly suspect us, for neither Grace nor I—nor you either, I suppose—have ever breathed a word of this to a single soul, not even to each other when there has been the slightest chance of our being overheard.”

“No, of course not; it was my fancy, perhaps,” I answered. “I must plead guilty to having felt a trifle anxious and nervous during the last few days. But that is all gone and past now. The first thing that I want to talk to you about, Gurney, is the boats. I don’t much like the idea of going to sea without boats, and especially the longboat. Now, so far as the quarter boats are concerned, I believe we might manage to get them both hoisted up to the davits, by hooking the watch-tackle on to the falls; but what about the longboat? Do you think there is any possibility of our being able to hoist her in?”

“We might, certainly—if we only had the time,” answered Gurney. “But it would have to be done before we passed out through the reef. In smooth water—if, as I say, we had the time—I dare say it could be done. But not outside, with the ship rolling and tumbling about; the boat would be stove long before we could get her inboard.”

“Undoubtedly,” I agreed. “But I have a plan which I think will afford us the time to hoist in the longboat as well as the two quarter boats before we go outside. When once we are safely out of the Basin, what have we to fear? Nothing, except being overtaken and the ship recaptured by a strong body of men sent after us in boats. But if they have no boats they cannot follow us! Now, my plan is this. I propose that, as soon as it seems safe to do so, we proceed to the spot where all the boats are moored, man the jollyboat, and tow all the rest off to the ship, veering them astern by their painters when we get aboard. Then we will loose and set the fore and main topsail and fore topmast staysail, slip the cable, and work the ship out between the Heads into the lagoon. Once there, we are safe; we can heave-to, and hoist the two quarter boats to the davits, then put on the hatches, and hoist in the longboat, with no fear that anyone can possibly interfere with us. Then, when we have completed our work to our satisfaction, we can cast the remaining boats adrift—they will be certain to drive ashore undamaged, and be recovered—and we can go out through the reef in broad daylight.”

“By Jove, Mr Troubridge, you have hit it!” exclaimed Gurney with enthusiasm. “If we can manage to secure the whole of the boats, and get the ship out of the Basin, undetected, we may defy all hands of them. Yes; I see no possibility of a hitch in that plan. But we shall not be safe until we are outside the Basin. And now, what do you think, Mr Troubridge, will it be safe to make a beginning at once, or shall we give them a little longer to get indoors and to sleep?”

“Every minute is of the utmost value to us,” said I. “Still, it would be a pity to spoil all by being too precipitate. Let us wait another hour, at the expiration of which I think we may safely make a move.”

Accordingly, we all three sat down in the deepest shadow of the rocks, chatting in low tones and discussing the prospects of the voyage, the chances of success in the somewhat desperate attempt that we were about to make, and kindred matters, until my watch showed that we were within an hour of midnight, when I thought it would be unwise to delay any longer, and accordingly gave the word to make a move. Whereupon Gurney hoisted his sweetheart’s box on his shoulders, and we all three moved cautiously and in dead silence along the beach toward where the boats were moored, keeping close in among the shadows cast by the cliffs and the overhanging foliage.

The boats, with the exception of the jollyboat, were all moored in a string at a distance of about a hundred yards from the beach, the longboat riding to a small boat anchor, while the others were secured to her by their painters, the jollyboat being hauled up on the sand. This was the boat that we intended to use to go off to the ship in, towing the other boats astern; and when we got alongside her, Gurney swung Grace Hartley’s box off his shoulder, intending to deposit it in the stern-sheets of the boat prior to launching her. As he leaned over the gunwale to do so, however, he started back with a smothered ejaculation, for at the same instant a human figure rose up out of the bottom of the boat, where it had been crouching. To drop the box on the sand was, with Gurney, the work of a second; and the next instant he had the man by the throat and was bearing him back into the bottom of the boat again, while Grace Hartley seized my arm and gripped it like a vice to prevent herself from screaming.

“Not a sound, for your life, Grace!” I hissed in her ear as I shook myself free from her grip. Then, springing to Gurney’s side, I exclaimed in a low, tense whisper:

“Steady, Gurney; steady, man! don’t kill the fellow, and don’t make a noise. Who is he? Let him get up and tell us who he is, and what he is doing here.”

“Do you hear what Mr Troubridge says?” growled Gurney in his prisoner’s ear. “Get up and give an account of yourself. But if you attempt to raise your voice I’ll choke the life out of you without more ado. Now then, let us have a look at you. Why, I’ll be shot if it isn’t Saunders!”

Saunders, it may be explained, was one of the original crew of the Mercury, and a very quiet, steady, well-conducted fellow. It was probably for that reason that he had not been chosen to go in the ship on her projected voyage to China.

I approached the man and stared in his face. Sure enough it was indeed Saunders; and a very scared as well as somewhat angry appearance he presented.

“Why, Saunders,” I exclaimed in low-pitched accents of surprise, “what are you doing here in the boat at this time of night? Come, explain yourself!”

“I will, Mr Troubridge, in half a jiffy, as soon as I’ve got the feel of Gurney’s grip out of my throat,” answered the man. “It’s like this, sir. I’ve been on this here island long enough to see that Wilde’s ideas won’t work. I can see that, accordin’ to his plan, I may stay here all my life and be no better off than I am to-day, ’cause why—the harder I and others like me works the better it is for a lot of lazy shirkin’ swabs, who’ve made up their minds that they’ll never do a hand’s turn if they can help it. And I don’t see no fun in workin’ for skowbanks like that. I’ve had about enough of it, and I wants to get away from this here place to somewheres where a man can get the full value of his labour. So I’ve kep’ my eye on you all day to-day, Mr Troubridge, on the lookout for a chance to ast you to let me stow myself away aboard the Mercury until she gets well out to sea, intendin’, you understand, sir, to cut and run at the first port that we touches at. But I couldn’t get the chance to speak to you without bein’ seen by them as I didn’t want to see me, so I follered you to-night when you started out for a walk—as I thought—intendin’ to range up alongside of you when we was well clear of the settlement. And afore I could arrange my thoughts shipshape, so’s to make clear what I wanted, you’d jined George here and the young lady, and I couldn’t help hearin’ pretty near all that was said. Now, sir, I understands that you and Gurney feels pretty much as I do about Wilde and his notions, and intends to give the lot of ’em the slip by makin’ off all alone by yourselves in the ship to-night. Ain’t that it, sir?”

“Well, supposing that we had any such plan, what have you to say about it?” I returned.

“Only this, sir,” answered Saunders, “that I begs you most earnestly to let me come in with you. It’s a stiff job, Mr Troubridge, for two people—for the young lady won’t count nothin’ to speak of—to work a ship the size of the Mercury, and you’d find me most uncommon useful, I assure ye, sir. I’m an A.B., and knows my business as well as e’er a man—”

“Yes,” I agreed, “that is perfectly true, Saunders, for I have noticed you more often than perhaps you think. But have you considered the tremendous amount of hard work that would fall to your share in such an adventure as you speak of? And hard work is not the only thing that has to be considered; a voyage of the kind that you are talking about is certain to involve a considerable element of danger. Are you—”

“I don’t care that for danger or hardship,” interrupted Saunders, snapping his fingers emphatically. “Only say that I may jine in the picnic, and you shan’t have no cause to regret it, sir.”

“What say you, Gurney?” I asked. “You have a right to a voice in this matter; and you probably know Saunders a good deal better than I do.”

“I say let him come by all means, Mr Troubridge,” answered Gurney. “He is a good man, and will be worth his weight in gold to us.”

“So I think,” agreed I. “But,” turning to Saunders, “are you prepared to start with us now, this instant? For I cannot consent to incur the risk and delay that would be involved in a return to the settlement.”

“There’s no call for me to go back, sir,” answered the man eagerly. “I’ve nobody to say goodbye to. And as to ‘dunnage’, why, I dare say I can make out pretty well durin’ the v’yage by helpin’ myself from the chests I shall find in the fo’c’s’le.”

“Very well, then,” said I, “you may come, Saunders, and welcome. Now, Miss Hartley, step in, please, and sit down while Gurney and I shove off. In with that box though, Gurney; we must not leave that behind. Go aft, Saunders, and help with an oar; but remember, everything must be done in absolute silence.”

The boat, which was already afloat for three parts of her length, was easily launched, and in another minute I was seated in the stern-sheets beside Grace Hartley, while Gurney and Saunders were gently and silently paddling toward the spot where the rest of the boats were moored. We ranged quietly up alongside the longboat, and I got hold of her painter and hauled up the anchor, which I placed in the bottom of the jollyboat. Whereupon the two men at the oars once more gave way gently, and we were soon slowly heading for the ship with the whole string of boats in tow. It took us a full half-hour to accomplish the distance between the ship and the spot where the boats had been moored, and during the whole of that time Gurney and Saunders kept their eyes intently fixed upon the settlement, while I steered; but the place remained wrapped in darkness, and nothing occurred to occasion us the least alarm.

During our stealthy passage across the basin we discussed in low tones the important question of the boats; and it was ultimately settled that we would take two of the four gigs, and at least make an effort to hoist in the longboat, the other two gigs and the jollyboat to be cast adrift and allowed to drive ashore as soon as we were ready to pass out through the reef. Accordingly, as soon as we had arrived alongside the ship, and Grace Hartley and her box had been safely passed up the side, all the boats were veered astern, the longboat and the best two of the gigs each by her own painter, while the other two gigs and the jollyboat were secured together in a string, one astern of the other, so that by casting off one painter all three of the boats would be released at the same instant, while, being lashed together, they would all go ashore at the same spot.

By the time these arrangements were carried out the hour of midnight had arrived. The moon—or what there was left of her—was not due to rise until an hour and twenty minutes later; but by the time that we had got the two gigs hooked on, and the tackles hauled hand-taut—which was as much as we intended to do with them before getting clear of the basin—we had come to the conclusion that the stars afforded us light enough to see by, and we therefore determined to proceed at once with the task of setting the canvas. I was more anxious over this part of our job than any other, for it was no light task for four people—one of whom was a slender slip of a girl—to sheet home and hoist the fore and main topsails of an eight-hundred-ton ship. It would be rather a lengthy business, and somewhat noisy at that; for on a quiet night the rasping of the chain sheets through the sheeve-holes might be heard at a considerable distance, far enough, indeed, to attract the attention of any sleepless individual in the settlement. Moreover, the inside of the Basin was a particularly quiet spot, being under the lee of the Heads, and thus sheltered to a considerable extent from the sweep of the wind. True, the reef lay to windward, and the ceaseless roar of the surf upon it filled the air with such a volume of sound during the night that other sounds might well be drowned in it; but if perchance any suspicious sounds from the direction of the ship were to reach the settlement, and the alarm be given, it might still be very awkward for us, although we had all the boats. For the settlers had plenty of firearms and ammunition obtained from the cargo; and if they were to muster on the Heads in time to fire upon us as we passed out of the Basin, one or more of us might be hit and disabled, if not killed, which would greatly jeopardise the success of our attempted flight. Still, the risk had to be taken, and all that we could do was to minimise it as much as possible by taking every precaution.

Accordingly the buntlines, clewlines, and leech-lines were cast off and very carefully overhauled, and the watch-tackle hitched to the halyards before any of us went up on the yards; then the gaskets were cast off, and the main topsail sheeted home. To us, with our every sense wrought to its highest pitch by anxiety, the noise was absolutely appalling, and seemed as though it might easily be heard at the most distant extremity of the island; but the die was cast. We had taken our fate in our hands, and there was nothing for it now but to go on and get this part of the business over as quickly as possible; therefore as soon as the sheets seemed to be home we belayed them and sprang to the watch-tackle. With the assistance of this handy little piece of gear we got the heavy yard mastheaded without much difficulty, although the process was a somewhat lengthy one, in consequence of the necessity to frequently fleet the tackle, racking the halyards meanwhile to keep what we had gained. However, we completed the job at length, and then the same process had to be gone through with the fore topsail; and it was while we were dragging away at the halyard of this sail that Grace Hartley, upon whom we had not as yet found it necessary to call for help, came running forward to tell us that lights were beginning to flash out here and there in the settlement. It was true; for when we paused from our labours for a moment to verify the statement I counted four separate points of light, and while we still stood looking, another and another leapt out of the darkness.

“The alarm is given and the men are being roused!” I exclaimed. “Well, it cannot be helped; and, anyhow, they are too late; for before they can even discover that we have the boats we shall be under way. Tail on again, my hearties, and let us get this yard mastheaded, then our heavy work will be done for the present. Grace, you will find a lantern in the steward’s pantry; light it, please, and bring it for’ard, but take care that the gleam is not seen from the shore. Well, there, with the halyards, belay! I think we have all that we can get of it. Saunders, slip out and cast loose the fore topmast staysail. Gurney, lend me a hand to brace round the foreyard!”

Little or no attempt was now made at concealment; we hoisted the fore topmast staysail, and, light as was the breeze inside the Basin, the rustling of that important piece of canvas drummed in our ears with a sound like thunder; but I had sense enough to know that it was exceedingly doubtful whether or not it could be heard at the settlement. The most noisy part of our work was yet to come, however; and to it we now bent our energies. This was the slipping of the cable. We soon had the shackle out, and the released portion of the cable at once rushed through the hawse-pipe with a roar that must certainly be heard at the settlement. Then I dashed aft to the wheel and flung it hard over to help the ship to cant, which she did with, as it seemed to me, most exasperating sluggishness. But she paid off at last, when we hauled aft the staysail sheet, braced up the yards, and the Mercury began, very deliberately, to forge ahead, and our great adventure was at length fairly begun. Then, while the ship ratched across the Basin, prior to tacking to pass out between the two Heads, Gurney and Saunders, both of whom were exceptionally powerful men, went to work to hoist the two gigs up to the davits.

By the time that they had got the first boat up, and the second one out of the water, we were far enough to windward to render it necessary to tack in order to avoid putting the old barkie ashore on the northern beach. I was just a little doubtful whether the ship would work under such short canvas, but we had now drawn out from under the lee of the south Head, and were feeling something of the true breeze. The water was smooth, and the ship had very nearly four knots’ way on her, I therefore determined to try it, and, giving the word “Ready about!” to the others, put the helm very gently down, my aim being to sail her round, if possible, with as little drag as might be from the rudder. She luffed into the wind quite as freely as could reasonably be expected; and the moment that I heard the head sails begin to flap I jammed the helm hard down and lashed it there, leaving the ship to herself while I sprang to help the others to swing the mainyard. By the time that we had got this and the main topsail yard round the ship was fairly paying off on the other tack, when I sang out to Grace to cast off the lashing and steady the helm. Then, letting go the fore braces, we dragged round the head yards and got them also braced up; whereupon I ran aft to the wheel again, leaving Gurney and Saunders to trim over the fore topmast staysail sheet.

Upon reaching the wheel I found Grace Hartley already perched alongside it, and the ship well to windward of the passage between the Heads. She had fallen off a good bit, owing to the sluggishness with which the head yards had been swung, but she was already coming to, and a few seconds later her jibboom was pointing straight for the middle of the passage, with the Heads looming up on either hand, black as ebony against the faint shimmer of starlight on the waters of the lagoon beyond. Gurney and Saunders now came aft and proceeded to complete the hoisting of the second quarter boat; and seeing that Grace seemed to know pretty well what she was about with the wheel I left her at it, directing her to steer the ship as nearly as might be midway between the two Heads, and went to lend the others a hand with the boat.

We had both davit-tackles “two blocks” by the time that the ship was fairly clear of the Heads and in the lagoon, after which we put the hatches on and battened them down. Then came the formidable job of endeavouring to hoist in the longboat—and a formidable job it was, when we actually came to seriously consider it. Nevertheless we determined to make the attempt. Time was the only thing needed to assure us success; and it was just in regard to this that we had our doubts. For it must be remembered that although we had got the ship out of the Basin, she was not yet in open water; on the contrary, she was now moving athwart the placid waters of the lagoon, heading about sou’-sou’-east. This lagoon, I think I have somewhere said, was, roughly, crescent-shaped in plan, measuring about ten miles long by about two and a half miles wide at its broadest part, the northern end being a trifle the more weatherly of the two.

Now, our plan was this. A ship, when hove-to, drifts along on a course as nearly as possible at right angles to the direction of the wind, which, in this case, was blowing due east. We therefore proposed to work the Mercury up toward the northern end of the lagoon, until, when brought round and hove-to, she should have room to drive slowly to the southward without going ashore on the fringing reef which projected into the lagoon an average distance of a mile from the island. Then, while she was thus drawing to the southward—the available distance being about seven miles, or maybe a trifle more—we were to make the attempt to hoist in the longboat by means of yard tackles, and stow her on the main hatch. The hatches were already on and battened down. To get the chocks into place to receive the boat was but the work of a few minutes; and then came the business of rousing out the yard tackles and getting them aloft. I knew where to lay my hand upon them, and soon had them ready for sending aloft; but by the time that we had got thus far the ship had drawn well over toward the southern end of the barrier reef, and it was time to heave about. We therefore tacked ship again, the old hooker working in much more lively fashion this time, because we were now within the influence of the true breeze. Then, with Grace Hartley still at the wheel, Gurney and Saunders went aloft and got the tackles up on the fore and main yards, also the stay purchases; and we were then ready to begin the actual work itself. The boat was next hauled alongside the starboard gangway, in readiness to be hooked on; when, the ship being by this time as far to the northward as it was prudent to go, we tacked, and hove-to on the port tack.

Chapter Seventeen.

The reef.

“That is good news,” I remarked, when Saunders had completed his report; “for, short-handed though we are, I think it may be possible for us to get the ship afloat again. Then if, as you, Gurney, have suggested, there happens to be a channel carrying depth enough to float us, we may yet hope to find our way into open water once more. Let us pray, however, that the channel—if such exists—does not trend to windward, unless, of course, it happens to be wide enough to work the ship in. And now, I think our first job must be to clew up and furl our canvas, otherwise, when the breeze comes—as come it may at any moment—we shall drive ashore in grim earnest, and perhaps never get afloat again.”

My two companions fully agreed with me; and accordingly, the halyards having already been let go, and the yards lowered to the caps, we let go the sheets and manned the clewlines and buntlines, first of the main and then of the fore topsail. Then we let go the fore topmast staysail halyards and hauled down the sail; finally laying out and securing it before going aloft to furl the topsails, which we tackled one at a time.

The next thing to be thought about was how to provide for the safety of the ship when the breeze should come again, as come it soon must. As the ship then lay she was heading almost exactly due east; and if the wind should happen to come away out from that quarter—which seemed to be its prevailing direction thereabout—I thought it not improbable that we might blow off the mudbank and go ashore again on the lee side of the lake, quite possibly in a very much worse position than that which we then occupied. Gurney and Saunders were quite of my opinion; and after talking the matter over for a while, we decided to get the stream anchor over the bows, in place of the one left behind at the island, bend a hawser to it, and have it all ready to let go at any moment. This we did without any difficulty, the anchor in question being of a weight not too great for the three of us to handle.

By the time that this job was ended the first signs of the coming dawn began to show themselves away to the eastward, and with one consent Gurney, Saunders, and I sprang into the main rigging and made our way aloft to the crosstrees, with the purpose of taking a good look round at our surroundings. In those low latitudes the day comes quickly, and we had not occupied our lofty perch many minutes when up leapt the sun, flashing his golden beams over the dark expanse spread out around us, and we saw, to our dismay, that we occupied a small basin—one of many such—situated almost in the exact centre of a vast reef, stretching over a distance which we roughly estimated at thirty miles from north to south, and perhaps twenty miles from east to west. The salt water that had been hove up with the reef had by this time all run off, leaving the dark, weed-covered rock fully exposed to view. Here and there, of course, owing to the exceeding roughness and irregularity of the surface, were scattered numerous pools, some small, and others of considerable extent, which must obviously soon evaporate and disappear under the influence of the sun’s beams; and the disagreeable possibility suggested itself to us all that the pool in which the Mercury floated might share the same fate. But we hoped not, for there were at least three channels, wide enough to permit the passage of the ship, leading out of our basin, stretching away across the reef, and joining other channels, until the labyrinth became too intricate for the eye to follow, and we trusted that one or more of these might lead to the open ocean.

While we still remained aloft, discussing our situation and the best means of extricating ourselves from it, a light air from the eastward arose, redolent of the mingled odours of mud and seaweed; and as a wind from this direction, if it would but come strong enough, might greatly assist our efforts to get the ship off the mudbank upon which she was partially grounded, we decided that we would at once try the effect of setting the main topsail and throwing it aback; so while Gurney and Saunders proceeded with this work, I looked about me for a suitable berth in which to moor the ship, in the event of our efforts to refloat her being crowned with success. At the height of the main topmast crosstrees it was easy for me to discern pretty clearly the character of the bottom of the basin in which we lay, and as the light increased I discovered that the mudbank which held the ship was only of very small extent, the remaining portion of the bottom being sandy, apparently of almost uniform depth below the surface of the water, and affording excellent holding ground. There was one place, however, some two hundred fathoms to the southward of the spot where the ship then lay, which seemed to be a trifle deeper than elsewhere, and I at once determined that, if we could by any means clear ourselves of the mud, I would anchor there.

By the time that I had thus decided, the other two had cast off the gaskets from the main topsail. I therefore slid down on deck by way of the topgallant backstay, and cast off the clewlines and buntlines that Saunders might overhaul them prior to coming down from aloft, and then manned the sheets, which, of course, came home easily enough, except for the last few inches, upon which I required the help of Gurney and Saunders. Then, having squared the main and topsail yard, we got the halyard to the winch, with the aid of a snatch-block, and hoisted the sail, flat aback. Gurney then went forward and loosed the fore topmast staysail ready for setting in case of need, while Saunders got the hand lead and dropped it over the side, in order that we might be able at once to detect any movement on the part of the ship.

The wind meanwhile had freshened perceptibly, and was now blowing a ten-knot breeze, the effect of which soon became perceptible, for the lead-line had not been overboard five minutes when Saunders cried out that the ship was moving. At the same moment I distinctly felt a slight tremor in the hull, followed by a barely perceptible jerk, then another, another, and another, and she was once more afloat and driving astern. I at once sprang to the wheel, and put it hard a-starboard, at the same time shouting to Gurney and Saunders to hoist the fore topmost staysail. Then, leaving the wheel to take care of itself, I sprang to the main braces, throwing the port main and topsail braces off their pins, and rounding in on the starboard as well as I could unaided. The ship had now paid off on the port tack; and as soon as the starboard fore topmast staysail sheet was hauled aft, she began to forge ahead, whereupon I rushed back to the wheel, steadied it, and called to Gurney to stand by to let go the stream anchor, and to Saunders to take a cast of the lead. The first cast gave us a bare four fathoms; the next, a trifle over four fathoms; the next, four and a half fathoms; and the next, five fathoms; whereupon I gave the word to let go the anchor and haul down the staysail, at the same time abandoning the wheel and springing to the main topsail halyard, which I let run. By the time that we had once more furled our canvas, breakfast was ready, and we all sat down to it with excellent appetites.

Having breakfasted, Gurney and I again betook ourselves aloft to the main topmast crosstrees, carrying the ship’s telescope with us, our object being to subject the reef to a thorough scrutiny, in the hope that, with the sun now high in the heavens, and the light as good as it was likely to be, we might be fortunate enough to discover a way of escape from our extraordinary prison.

As a matter of fact we did now get a much clearer and, on the whole, more satisfactory view of the reef than upon the previous occasion; but although we perceived a perfect network of channels—some so narrow as scarcely to permit the passage of a boat, while others were wide enough in places actually to allow a ship to work to windward in them—the inequalities in the surface of the reef were so great as to render it impossible for us to trace any of them for more than three or four miles at the utmost. There were four channels, wide enough to allow the passage of the ship, branching out from the basin in which we lay, one trending toward the north-east; another running off toward the north-west, and then, apparently, by a zigzag course ultimately leading to open water on the west side of the reef; a third running west out of the basin for a distance of about three miles, beyond which its farther course became untraceable; and a fourth, broad on our starboard bow, which looked the most promising of all. We counted seven pools, or lakelets, in addition and similar to our own—three to the northward, one to the eastward, two to the southward, and one to the south-westward of our own; but the one in which the Mercury floated seemed to be the largest of them all. The reef appeared to be composed wholly of rock, covered for the most part with weed, but with broad expanses of sand here and there, interspersed with mud banks; and its height above the ocean level seemed to vary from about a foot to ten or fifteen feet, with occasional isolated hummocks, rising perhaps as high in some cases as forty feet. With the aid of the telescope we were able to perceive that considerable quantities of fish had been stranded and left to perish by the sudden upheaval, and the appearance of them caused me a slight spasm of alarm on the score of our health, which was only partially dissipated by the fact, to which Gurney directed my attention, that already great flocks of sea birds had appeared and were busily devouring them.

We remained aloft for more than an hour, studying the reef and, so far as I was concerned, making copious notes and a rough sketch map of it in my notebook, and then descended to the deck, having come to the conclusion that the only thing to be done was to make a systematic exploration of the reef, and especially of the channels, by means of one of the boats.

For this purpose we selected the larger of the two quarter boats, a very handsomely modelled craft of twenty-six feet long by six feet beam, with a keel nearly eight inches deep in midships, and rigged as a fore-and-aft schooner. She had been the late captain’s fancy boat, used by him for sailing ashore from open roadsteads, and was fitted with air-chambers forward and aft and under each of the thwarts, thus being converted into a sort of unsinkable lifeboat. She was therefore in every respect eminently suitable for the duty upon which we proposed to employ her.

I was rather afraid that, upon learning our purpose, Grace Hartley might express a desire to accompany us; and this would be somewhat awkward, in view of the rough work which might possibly lie before us; but to my relief she expressed herself as perfectly content to remain aboard alone, upon being assured that no harm could possibly happen to the ship. We therefore bent the ensign on to the main signal halyards, showed her how to hoist it, and directed her to run it up to the main truck in the event of anything occurring to render our immediate return to the ship necessary. Then, having hastily stowed away a few biscuits and a piece of cold salt beef in the boat’s stern locker, and placed a small breaker of fresh water in her for ballast, we lowered her to the water, brought her to the gangway, rigged her, and got away about six bells in the forenoon watch, Grace waving her farewells to us from the poop.

We decided to begin our exploration by examining the channel which opened on the south side of the basin, as that was the widest and the most promising of the four. Accordingly, upon leaving the ship, we brought the boat close to the wind on the port tack—which just enabled her to point fair for the mouth of the channel—and at once proceeded to take soundings. But we had not been under way five minutes before we found that, under whole canvas, the boat travelled much too fast to enable us to sound with the frequency and accuracy that I considered necessary; we were consequently obliged to take in the foresail altogether, and sail the boat under the single-reefed mainsail and jib, at least during the outward journey.

Within ten minutes of leaving the ship we glided into the channel which it was our intention to explore, and found ourselves slipping along a waterway ranging from two hundred to a thousand feet in width, with an average depth of about five fathoms. The sides of the channel were very rough and irregular, its direction was also exceedingly erratic, varying from east-south-east to south by west. This irregularity of direction was the worst feature of the channel; for, with the prevailing direction of the wind at about due east, there were stretches of the channel looking so close into the wind’s eye that the ship could never be sailed through them. True, some of these stretches were so short that Gurney believed the Mercury could be carried through them by making a half-board; but this would be a somewhat hazardous experiment, unless the wind chanced to veer a point or two in our favour, while, even then, there were other stretches that could only be traversed by kedging. But, apart from this disadvantage, there was nothing to find fault with, the channel being everywhere wide enough to permit the passage of the ship, and the depth in it never less than twenty feet, with a fine sandy bottom.

We traversed this channel for a distance of about nine miles, during which the general trend of it might be said to be south-east, and then we arrived at a point where it not only widened out, but also abruptly took a south-south-west direction, to our great delight. For if the ship could by any means be coaxed as far as this, she could then proceed with a free wind. But, alas for our hopes, we had not traversed more than another mile and a half before we found ourselves in a cul-de-sac, the channel coming to an abrupt end.

This was a very severe disappointment to us, for after travelling so far, and meeting with so few difficulties, we were already beginning to congratulate ourselves upon having found a way of escape at the first attempt. However, there was no use in worrying about it, the only thing to be done was to retrace our steps and try one of the other channels.

It must not be supposed that the channel which we had thus traversed to its extremity was unbroken; on the contrary, there were several other channels branching out of it to right and left at various points in its length, two of which at least—one about three miles back, and another five miles back—had struck us as not altogether unpromising, and our idea was now to return and examine these. But before starting upon our return journey Gurney made a suggestion that was destined to exercise an extraordinary influence upon our future. As we lay hove-to in the cul-de-sac, discussing the question of what should next be done, our attention had been more than once attracted toward a large hummock of rock rising some thirty or forty feet above the general level of the reef, at no great distance from the margin of the channel; and Gurney’s proposal was that, before attempting anything else, we should land, make our way to the hummock, climb it, and ascertain whether any observations of value were to be made from its summit. The proposal had so much to commend it that it was agreed to forthwith. Laying the boat alongside the rock at a convenient spot, we all three landed, and set out to walk across the reef. The hummock in question was only some two hundred yards from the margin of the channel; we therefore soon reached it, despite the difficulty of the going, the surface of the reef proving to be exceedingly rough, and covered for the most part with weed so terribly slippery that it was positively dangerous to attempt to walk upon it. When at length we reached the summit of the rock we were not much better off; for although we could see from thence a great deal more of the reef than was to be observed from the boat, we made no discoveries that were likely to facilitate our escape.

But while we stood upon the summit of this rock, staring about us, our attention was arrested by the sight of a great brown patch, some three or four acres in extent, showing up strongly against the dull black of the otherwise weed-covered rock. Although it obviously had nothing to do with channels, or extricating the ship from her extraordinary situation, our curiosity was aroused, and we determined to pay it a visit and ascertain its character before returning to the boat. It lay some three hundred yards to the south of the hummock, and we saw that, upon returning from it to the boat, we should only need to pass close to the eastward of the hummock to hit off the correct trail.

Accordingly we descended to the surface of the reef, and headed for the mysterious brown patch, which we soon reached, some suspicion of its true character having dawned upon us, even before we arrived at the spot, from the circumstance that, as we approached, our nostrils became cognisant of a “most ancient and fish-like smell”. The suspicion that we had formed was confirmed upon our arrival by the discovery that the object of our curiosity was a great bed of oysters, hove up and exposed to the air by the convulsion of the previous night. But, fond as I am of oysters, I did not care to tackle any of these; for, apart from the fact that many of them were already dead, I did not altogether like the appearance of them. They were very much larger than the ordinary edible oyster; and to my mind they did not look quite wholesome. Saunders, however, was far less fastidious than either Gurney or me; he found one or two that, being immersed in a shallow pool of salt water, were still alive, and announced his intention of trying them. Accordingly, producing a strong clasp knife, he contrived, with some difficulty, to open one; and no sooner had he forced the shells apart than I guessed that we had all stumbled upon a fortune, in extent probably “beyond the dreams of avarice!” For as the shells parted, exposing the fish, three or four small bead-like objects became revealed, that I instantly recognised as pearls. The oysters were undoubtedly pearl oysters; and the millions of shells that lay at our feet doubtless contained gems enough to make us all rich for the remainder of our days!

Not to be behindhand with Saunders, I seized one of the bivalves, already dead and with the shells gaping apart, and tore it open; but although the shell was lined with beautiful lustrous mother-o’-pearl, it was barren of gems. Flinging this away, I tried another, and a third and fourth, with a like result; a fifth yielded nine small pearls about the size of duck shot; numbers six and seven proved barren; but the eighth surrendered to my eager grasp a magnificent pearl, perfectly globular, quite half an inch in diameter, and, when cleaned, of exquisite lustre and colour. Gurney and Saunders meanwhile had been as busily engaged as myself, and between them had secured three more gems not quite so large as mine, and about as much seed pearl as would half fill an ordinary wineglass. One of the three smaller pearls, however—secured by Gurney—amply made up in beauty what it lacked in size, for it was of a most exquisitely delicate yet rich rose colour.

“My friends,” said I, as soon as I was able to collect my scattered senses and speak intelligibly, “it is said that the darkest cloud has a silver lining, and the extraordinary accident by which we have become imprisoned in the meshes of this reef—let us hope only temporarily—has at the same time presented us with a treasure of incalculable value. I think we should be almost criminally negligent if we failed to make the utmost of our marvellous good fortune, and I therefore propose that, before we proceed further with the exploration of the reef, we take steps to secure the wealth that lies spread so lavishly at our feet. Let us take these oysters and spread them—or at least a portion of them—in rows, so that the sun may get at them and speedily bring about that state of decomposition which I understand is necessary to enable the gems they contain to be secured uninjured. And I further propose that, whatever be the value of the wealth we may ultimately secure, it be equally divided between all four of us; for it would be manifestly unfair that Miss Hartley should not equally participate in our good as in our ill fortune. What say you?”

My companions cheerfully agreed with my proposal, and, this point settled, we forthwith proceeded to collect the oysters indiscriminately from the enormous heap and lay them out singly upon the seaweed in long rows, taking care to place each bivalve quite flat, in order that, as the process of decomposition proceeded, the precious contents should not roll out and be lost. So absorbed were we in our occupation that we did not desist until the sun hung upon the very verge of the western horizon, by which time we had placed in position very nearly three thousand oysters. And not until then did we find time to remember that we had eaten nothing since leaving the ship!

Then, returning to the boat, we cleansed our hands in the water alongside, shook out our reef, set all our canvas, and headed the boat back to the ship, snatching a hasty meal as we went.

Chapter Eighteen.

The pearls.

The breeze freshened with the disappearance of the sun beneath the horizon, and the boat, under whole canvas and in the perfectly smooth water of the canal-like channel, fairly flew along, careening almost gunwale-to, with a merry buzzing of water at her sharp stem, as she sheared through it with a sound like the rending of silk. In about an hour and a half, favoured with a free wind, and a sufficiency of starlight to enable us to see our way, we found ourselves once more alongside the ship, tired with the fatigues of the day, but excited and happy at the amazing good fortune that had befallen us. For the moment we could neither think nor talk of anything but pearls; the precarious situation of the ship and the consideration of what might happen to her should a gale spring up were entirely lost sight of, and already Saunders, if not Gurney and myself, was anxiously considering what he should do with his wealth when he had conveyed it safely home. Grace Hartley, woman-like, fairly gloated over the sight of the lovely gems that we had brought back with us, and earnestly besought us that she might be allowed to accompany us on our next visit to the oyster-bed, in order that she might have the delight of securing a few with her own hands; and after some demur we promised that she might do so on the following day, by the end of which she would probably have had quite enough of it; for decomposition of animal matter is speedy under a tropical sun, and our experience even of a single day led us all to conclude that another twenty-four hours would reduce the stranded oysters to a condition sufficiently revolting to tax even male endurance pretty severely.

The following morning found us all early astir, and the moment that breakfast was over the boat was brought alongside and our provisions for the day passed down into her. Then Gurney descended and assisted his sweetheart down the side, Saunders following, and I bringing up the rear. The boat’s sails were set, and under whole canvas we pushed off on our way to the oyster-bed; for the craving for wealth was upon us all, and we felt that every moment spent otherwise than in gathering it was so much wasted time.

The breeze was still blowing fresh, and, although for the greater part of the distance the boat was jammed close upon a wind, we made excellent time between the ship and our point of destination, arriving there after a pleasant sail of less than two hours. But long before we arrived I began to wish that I had thought of putting a gun into the boat; for while we were still a good two miles from the oyster-bed we saw the birds hovering over it in thousands, and I strongly suspected that upon arrival we should find that those same birds had played havoc with our previous day’s work. And so we did; for when we reached the spot we found our neatly arranged rows of oysters turned topsy-turvy by the birds in their endeavours to get at the fish, while the odour that emanated from the millions of dead bivalves was already powerful enough to upset any but a strong stomach.

Although the birds had completely disarranged our labours of the preceding day, they did not appear to have otherwise done any very serious damage. It is true that every single oyster that we had laid out so carefully had been attacked, dragged out of place, and the fish extracted; but nearly a hundred pearls of value were found between the otherwise empty shells, while a careful examination of the ground revealed fully as many more, together with as much seed pearl as would rather more than fill a half-pint measure. Grace Hartley accompanied us from the boat to the oyster-bed, and remained long enough to actually find for herself two very fine pearls; but that sufficed. She confessed that the effluvium was altogether too powerful for her, and beat a hasty retreat to the boat, where she spent the remainder of the day in comparative comfort, only an occasional faint whiff of odour reaching her there. As for us males, we had taken the precaution to bring along with us a ship’s bucket, which we filled with salt water upon leaving the boat, and every pearl found, whether large or small, was dropped into this as soon as found.

Our first task was to go very carefully over the ground upon which we had laid out our oysters on the previous day, retrieving the pearls that had been thrown out of the shells by the birds in their endeavours to extract the fish; and when we had satisfied ourselves that no more were to be found there, we turned our attention to the bed itself, where also the birds had been, and still remained, exceedingly busy. But we did not then attempt to look for spilled pearls, for the bulk of the oysters were by this time dead, and had been so long enough to render the opening of the shells quite an easy matter. We therefore wandered about the bed examining such of the shells as happened to be gaping open, extracting any pearls that might happen to be therein, and then flinging fish and shell as far away to leeward as we could. We had done with those, and now tossed them aside, in order that we might not inadvertently find ourselves handling them a second time. We toiled assiduously throughout the whole of that day, my two companions smoking steadily all the time in order to counteract, as far as might be, the sickening odour of the fast-decaying fish.

When we knocked off work shortly before sunset we found that altogether we had gathered during the day five hundred and nineteen pearls varying in size from a large pea to a marble, and nearly a quart measure full of seed pearl. Our prizes were, generally speaking, of the usual soft, sheeny, white colour; but there were exceptions to this, two more pink pearls being found, as well as one of a deep rich exquisite rose colour, one of a very delicate shade of sea-green, and seven of so very dark a smoke colour that they were almost black. We did not think very much of these last, believing that their extremely dark colour was against them; but we ultimately discovered that this was very far from being the case, that precise shade of colour being exceedingly rare.

None of us had much appetite for food that night when we got back to the ship; and when we turned out next morning we were even less desirous of food than we had been on the previous evening. We were all suffering from violent headaches, accompanied by great nausea, and were fain to confess that we had had quite enough of the oyster-bed for the present. We therefore soon agreed to let that part of the reef very severely alone for at least a week, and to devote the interval to the prosecution of our survey of the channel. Accordingly, after making an ineffectual attempt to do justice to the excellent meal which Grace Hartley had provided for us, we three males hauled the boat alongside, descended into her, and got under way.

Our course, for the first seven and a half miles, lay along the canal leading to the oyster-bed, our purpose being to examine two promising-looking channels that branched out of it, and that we had already noticed and commented upon. On reaching the more distant—and, as we thought, the more promising—of the two we bore up and, with the wind over our starboard quarter, ran away on a west-south-west course for about five miles, next hauling up to about south. But by the time that we had run some four miles in this new direction we saw clearly that this channel could be of no possible service to us, for it began to shoal, and ultimately became too shallow to float the ship; therefore as, simultaneously with this discovery, we caught a strong whiff of tainted wind from our oyster-bed, some four miles to windward, we put down our helm, tacked, and retraced our steps, going back a couple of miles along the oyster-bed channel to the other channel which we desired to examine.

It was by this time about noon, and the purer air of the reef generally—although even that was not wholly innocent of a suggestion of decaying fish—had so far restored our appetites that we decided to pipe to dinner; accordingly, upon entering the new channel we opened out the package that Grace had prepared for us, and fell to. The channel in which we now found ourselves trended generally about north-east by east for a distance of some four and a half miles, there were therefore short stretches in it here and there where the wind came too shy to allow the boat to lay her course, and we consequently had to beat to windward, a long leg and a short one, in those stretches.

At length we reached a point where the channel took a due northerly trend, when away we went with flowing sheets, but under short canvas, sounding industriously all the way. Then, after we had traversed some ten miles in all of this new channel, we quite suddenly and unexpectedly found ourselves in a basin, very similar to that in which the Mercury lay peacefully at anchor, but not quite so large. We coasted along the weather side of this basin for a distance of about two miles, and then found another channel, which we at once entered. This channel trended north-east, but we had not sailed above four miles before it narrowed so much that we saw it would be useless to us, and we therefore bore up and returned to the newly-discovered basin. Continuing our progress round this, we found another channel, branching out of its north-western extremity, and as it had a rather promising appearance we plunged into it. It trended away to the northward and westward for the first seven miles, then turned abruptly toward the southward for a distance of some five miles, when we found ourselves in another channel trending about north-north-west and south-south-east.

This channel was even more promising than the one which we had just emerged from, being almost double the width; but we were puzzled for the moment as to which direction to take, whether to head to the northward or the southward. The northerly-trending channel might lead anywhere; the southerly portion, on the other hand, looked as though it might possibly take us back to the ship, the spars of which were visible some nine miles away. We decided to try the latter, as the day was by this time well advanced, and, should we ultimately find ourselves obliged to retrace our steps, it would make us very late in getting back to the ship. Fortunately, however, we were not driven to this latter alternative, for after following the winding course of the southerly channel for a distance of some twelve miles we arrived at the north-eastern extremity of the basin in which the Mercury lay at anchor, and safely arrived alongside half an hour later, having spent the day in circumnavigating a portion of the reef which we thus discovered to be entirely surrounded by channels of a width and depth of water sufficient to allow of the passage of the ship. This discovery, however, was of no practical service to us; for it still left us in our original state of uncertainty regarding the existence of a channel through which the ship might be taken into open water.

The narrative of our efforts to find such a channel has been given thus far with considerable detail, in order to bring home to the reader some idea of the extreme awkwardness of our situation, and the difficulties and perplexities with which we found ourselves confronted; but there is no need to continue the story further in quite so detailed a form, since the progress of our researches was unaccompanied by anything in the nature of adventure. Let it suffice, therefore, to say that we traversed the multitudinous canal-like channels of that labyrinthine reef continuously for ten days longer before we found a passage of sufficient width, and with a sufficient depth of water in it everywhere, to enable the Mercury to go through it to the open sea. This passage, when found, proved to be a continuation of the channel originating in the north-eastern angle of what we had now come to speak of as the Mercury Basin, from the fact that the ship lay anchored in it. Although it was an undoubted fact that we had actually found a channel leading from this basin to open water, the difficulties in the way of successfully carrying the ship through it were so great that we had very grave doubts of our ability to accomplish it. In the first place, the course of the channel was of so winding a character that, according to a very careful estimate, the ship would have to traverse no less than a hundred and ten miles of waterway before clearing the reef; consequently it would be impossible to accomplish the whole distance during the hours of daylight of a single day; while to attempt the navigation of any portion of it during the hours of darkness was altogether too hazardous an undertaking to be calmly thought of. But, as though this difficulty were not in itself sufficient, there was a stretch of twelve miles of channel running in a north-easterly direction which the ship could not possibly negotiate under sail unless a change of wind should occur—of which there seemed to be absolutely no prospect. The only alternative, therefore, would be to kedge those twelve miles; truly a most formidable undertaking for four persons—one of them being a girl—to attempt. Fortunately, however, for us all, the problem of how to overcome these tremendous difficulties was solved for us by accident, and quite unexpectedly. For, upon going over this long and intricate channel again, in order thoroughly to familiarise ourselves with it, and to become better acquainted with its many danger-points, it happened that on the return journey—which was being made by moonlight—we missed our way, continuing along what appeared to be the main channel, instead of diverging into a branch trending to the eastward; and by the time that we discovered our mistake we were so favourably impressed with the appearance of this new, strange channel—which seemed to be running almost straight toward Mercury Basin—that we determined to follow it up and see whither it led.

Not to dilate unnecessarily upon this portion of our adventures, we discovered, to our infinite satisfaction and delight, that it did indeed ultimately conduct us back to the ship; and that, too, by a route which reduced the distance to be travelled to about forty-five miles, or very considerably less than half that of the other channel. Moreover, while the original channel first ran north, then north-east, for the twelve miles that were only to be covered by kedging—before it ultimately changed its course to south—in which direction the point of ultimate egress lay, the new channel left Mercury Basin at its western, or leeward, extremity, running first west, then south-west, and ultimately south, straight out to sea. Thus the whole distance could be traversed under sail and with a free wind. The three following days and nights were devoted to a most careful re-examination of this new channel, with the result that we thoroughly satisfied ourselves as to its absolute practicability.

With our minds thus relieved of a tremendous load of anxiety, we felt ourselves once more able to turn our thoughts in the direction of our pearl harvest. A full fortnight had been devoted to the exploration of the reef since our last visit to the oyster-bed, and we were of opinion that it ought by this time to be in such a condition as to afford us a very handsome return for our labours.

Accordingly, after allowing ourselves a day’s rest to enable us to recover from the fatigues of our recent arduous boat duty, we once more repaired to the oyster-bed—Grace Hartley preferring on this occasion to remain “at home”, as she put it, rather than again face the disgusting sights and odours that had met her on the occasion of her visit. But upon our arrival at the scene of operations we soon found that a fortnight had made a vast amount of difference in the condition of the oysters. For whereas when we had last visited the oyster-bed the process of putrefaction had only just begun, it had now advanced so far that the fish were not only completely decayed but had also in many cases so completely dried up under the influence of the sun’s rays as to have, to a very great extent, lost their odour. Furthermore, the birds had been so busy that more than half the shells had been completely emptied; our task, therefore, although still excessively disagreeable, promised to be far less revoltingly offensive and disgusting than it had been before. Even such offensiveness as still remained we contrived to mitigate to a very considerable extent, by adopting the simple plan of starting work on the windward edge of the bed, whereby the accumulated odours were blown away from us, instead of directly in our faces, as on the previous occasion.

Now we went to work systematically, roughly dividing the bed into three nearly equal portions, one of which was to be gone over very carefully by each of us. Also we each had a bucket, into which to drop our spoils, so that there might be no time lost and no unnecessary fatigue incurred in passing to and fro. Our system of working was simplicity itself, and merely consisted in starting operations on the extreme weather side of the bed, examining the fish just as they came to hand, extracting such pearls as they contained, dropping the gems into the bucket of water with which each of us was provided, and then throwing the shells out on the reef apart from those still untouched. We toiled on thus all day, with a pause of half an hour about midday, when we retired to the boat, cleaned ourselves as well as we could, and snatched a hasty meal, concluding our labours about half an hour before sunset. When, during the run back to the ship at the end of the day, we proceeded to compare notes and take stock of the results of our labour, we came to the conclusion that either the bed was an enormously rich one, or that we had had an exceedingly lucky day, for our combined booty consisted of over fourteen hundred pearls—sixty-three of which were of quite exceptional value from their size or colour—and a full quart measure of seed pearl. I was of opinion, at the time—and am so still—that we might have obtained considerably more than we did of the last, but for the eagerness with which we prosecuted our search for the larger gems, which caused our search for the smaller seed pearls to degenerate into a very perfunctory operation.

The story of one day’s work at the oyster-bed is the story of all; it is therefore unnecessary to say more upon the subject than that we spent a full fortnight upon the task of gathering pearls, by the end of which time we had acquired so much dexterity at the work that we did more in one day than we did in two at the beginning of our labours. Then, although at the expiration of the fortnight we seemed to have made scarcely any perceptible inroad upon that enormous deposit, we grew tired of our self-imposed task and mutually agreed that we had accumulated as much wealth as we required. Moreover, as we watched the increase of that wealth day by day, our anxiety grew lest perchance anything should happen to prevent our escape from the reef and our return to that civilisation, where alone our wealth could be of any real value to us. The reader may reasonably ask what grounds of justification we had for the fear that anything could possibly happen to prevent our escape, seeing that we had been fortunate enough to discover a channel through which the ship might be easily taken out to sea; but I think we all still carried a vivid recollection of the terrific natural convulsion that had placed us in the extraordinary situation which we then occupied; and I believe the others shared with me the feeling that, such a thing having once happened, it might possibly happen again. The reef that had held us prisoners for so long might sink again to the ocean depths, perchance carrying the ship with it in the terrific turmoil that must ensue; or it might be hove up still higher, leaving the ship stranded and immovable; and then what would be our plight? Therefore, when on the evening of a certain day Gurney ventured to voice the suggestion that it would now be well to think seriously of making good our escape, while yet the opportunity to do so remained to us, neither of the others raised so much as a single word of protest, but on the contrary agreed to the proposal with an eagerness which clearly showed how welcome it was to us all.

“As for me,” said Gurney, when walking the poop with me that night and discussing the matter, “my way is now clear; Gracie and I will get married as soon as we arrive in Sydney; and then I think I may venture to return home and once more hope to find a welcome beneath the roof-tree which shelters those to whom I have given so much sorrow.”

“Indeed,” remarked I, scarcely knowing what to say, for my companion had spoken those last words in a tone of such intense feeling that I felt convinced a story must lie behind them.

“Yes,” he said, and was silent for a minute or two, apparently plunged in deep and painful thought. Then, suddenly throwing up his head, he continued: “I belong to the genus Prodigal Son. Would you care to hear my story? I think I should rather like to tell it you; for you are a good lad, high-spirited, full of generous impulses, eager to excel, and full of pluck. You are bound to make a success of your life if you will only steadfastly follow the path that your feet are now treading. But—forgive me for saying so—the qualities that you possess, excellent as they are, are precisely those that, unless you are very careful, are likely to betray you.

“When I was your age I was just such another lad as you are, and my father was as proud of, and as hopeful for, me as any parent can possibly be of an only son. He gave me a first-class education, and finally procured me an excellent post under Government. My duties took me abroad—there is no need to say where—and I at once found myself the associate and companion of a lot of young fellows who had somehow imbibed the idea that it was incumbent upon them, as Government officials, to adopt a smart, bold, dashing, reckless demeanour, a kind of modern edition of the swashbucklers of the Stuart regime; and they did their best to live up to that idea. This sort of thing was quite new to me; for you must remember that I was fresh from school at the time, and had never seen anything of the kind before, my father being an exceptionally quiet and sober-minded individual, associating only with men of similar temperament to himself. With my new companions, however, ‘respectability’ was voted old-fashioned and out of date, sobriety of conduct a bore. They were fine, dashing, high-spirited young fellows, fearing nothing and nobody, and they didn’t care who knew it. They drank freely, constituted themselves authorities on all kinds of sport, gambled, and did many other things that at first distinctly frightened me, but which, a little later on, I rather admired, and—like the young fool that I was—soon began to humbly emulate. Facilis descensus Averni! The reverence for truth, and purity, and uprightness that had come to me in the atmosphere of home soon died. I recognised that those virtues belonged to a bygone period, but I was going to be up-to-date, in the forefront: nobody should surpass me! I dare say—ay, and I very fervently hope—that all this sounds the most incredible folly to you; but I give you my word that, so imperceptible were the steps by which I descended the down-grade that, looking back upon it all, I am even now not astonished at what I did. I believe that it was inevitable, under the circumstances, for, mark you this, I had never been warned against it! My parents had such implicit faith in me that the possibility of such a warning being necessary never occurred to them! Of course there could only be one end to this sort of thing, and in two years it came. Two years sufficed to convert me, from such a lad as you are now, into an utterly worthless, disreputable blackguard, a confirmed drunkard, a hardened liar, and—a contemptible thief! With my constitution completely shattered, I was obliged to resign my post, to avoid being kicked out, and I returned home a moral and physical wreck. But, even then, my poor father and mother had no suspicion of the truth, for I told them that my condition was due to fever contracted in the discharge of my duty. It was, however, impossible for me to conceal the truth from them very long after I had once more come under their roof; and the grief and shame that overwhelmed them when at length their eyes were opened might have melted the heart of a stone. But it did not melt mine, for I was by that time so completely the slave of my vices that I had lost every vestige of natural feeling. I continued my drunken habits as long as I had money to spend on liquor; and when finally I had exhausted my own resources I stole from my parents the means to still continue in the indulgence of my degrading vice. It broke my poor mother’s heart, and she died; and on the day of her funeral I was unable to follow her body to its last resting-place, because I was too drunk to stand or speak! That was the crowning act of my disgraceful career; for on that very day my father gave me twenty pounds and turned me out of his house, forbidding me ever again to darken his door. I went to London, spent my twenty pounds in a wild life, got into a street fight, and was carried to a hospital with a knife-wound between my ribs; and there I lingered between life and death for nearly a month before I took a turn for the better and began to mend; and it was three months before I was up and out again. But during that three months the hospital chaplain contrived to gain my confidence. He induced me to tell him my story; and in return he told me some home truths that had the eventual effect of opening my eyes to the enormity of my guilt, the effect being helped, perhaps, by the fact that during my stay in the hospital I had been cured of my cursed craving for drink. When at length I was ready to leave the hospital my friend the chaplain offered to communicate with my father and endeavour to effect a reconciliation; but I refused. I had vowed that I would never return home until I could do so as a thoroughly reformed character; I therefore made my way down to the docks, took the first berth that offered, and, under the assumed name of George Gurney, became a common sailor. You will think, perhaps, that to go to sea, and in such a capacity, was not quite the best possible method whereby to effect my reformation, and may be it was not, but I was determined that nothing—nothing—should stand in my way; and I think I may now say, without undue confidence, that I have succeeded. Gracie, to whom I have told my story, assures me that I need no longer fear to face my father, and I believe her, for a woman can see more deeply than a man. So now I shall return home, to be a comfort, as I devoutly hope, to my dear father’s declining years; and perhaps, with the aid of my wealth, I may be able to do enough good to obliterate the memory of all the grief and shame that I have caused him to suffer. That is my story, Troubridge; and all that I will add to it is this: If ever you feel tempted to stray, though ever so slightly, from the path of rectitude, think of the man whom you once knew as George Gurney; and let his history serve as a warning to you. And now I will say good night; for we must be stirring early to-morrow.”

Chapter Twenty.

The end of the voyage.

Suddenly the surface of the water darkened away toward the north-west, showing that a breeze was coming along from that direction, and we sprang to the port braces, rounding them in a foot or two to meet it, and hauling taut and making fast the starboard. We worked quickly, not yet knowing quite what was at the back of the coming breeze; but it proved to be only a trifle after all, creeping down toward us very gradually, and scarcely careening the ship when at length it reached her. But, trifling though it was, it was none the less welcome to us all; for it was inexpressibly refreshing once more to feel a wind fanning our fevered faces, stirring our hair, raising a pleasant tinkling sound of water under the bows and along the bends, and stilling the eternal and distracting flap of canvas aloft after the long period of breathless calm through which we had sweltered. Moreover, the ship was once more moving through the water, with her jibboom pointing in the right direction, and every mile that she now travelled was so much to the good, increasing our chances of getting across the Line and making our escape from the awful region of equatorial calms which constitute such a ghastly bugbear to those who go down to the sea in sailing-ships. Our self-congratulations proved, however, to be premature, for the breeze lasted only about half an hour when it died away again, leaving us as completely becalmed as before. But during that half-hour we had succeeded in covering quite two miles; while the schooner, evidently strong-handed, had snatched at the opportunity afforded her and, hastily setting her mainsail and jibs once more, had managed to creep up to within a short mile of us before the breeze died away, leaving both craft once more boxing the compass.

But we were by no means discouraged, for we had only to glance round us at the great lowering cloud-masses, that seemed to have descended almost to the level of our mastheads, to know that there would be plenty more wind before we again beheld blue sky. And, if appearances went for anything, we should not have very much longer to wait for it, for the blackness overhead was working like yeast, and the outfly might come at any moment. Yet another half-hour passed, and nothing happened. Then, while we all stood gazing and waiting, the canopy of cloud that arched above us was rent asunder by a steel-bright flash of lightning so intensely vivid that we were all completely blinded for a few seconds, and the next instant there followed a crash of thunder that would have drowned the combined broadsides of a thousand line-of-battle ships, and the tremendous concussion of which caused the poor old Mercury to quiver and tremble from stem to stern.

“Now look out for the rain!” shouted Gurney exultantly, as he sprang to close the skylight covers. “Jump below, Gracie dear,” he continued, “or get under cover before the rain comes and washes you overboard!”

But the rain did not come, at least not just then; but, as though that first flash had been a signal-gun, the whole of the visible heavens seemed to break at the same moment into lightning flashes, and for a full quarter of an hour there was such a terrific lancing of lightning, such a crashing and roaring and rumbling of thunder, that one might almost have thought the navies of the world had foregathered up aloft there and with one accord had set about the task of annihilating each other. During the whole of this time not a solitary drop of rain fell, and not enough stirring of air occurred to extinguish the flame of a candle; we had nothing to do but simply to stand there, dazzled and deafened, and watch, as far as we might, this wonderful, awe-inspiring manifestation of the conflicting forces of nature.

It happened that the schooner lay right in the wake of the most violent part of the storm; we therefore had her full in view as we stood and watched. Her people were at this time busily engaged in restowing their mainsail and jibs, apparently convinced that the ultimate outcome of all this elemental disturbance must be an outfly of wind against which it would be well to be fully prepared. They had got their mainsail down, and some eight or ten hands were stretched along the length of the boom, tightly rolling up the great folds of canvas, while four more were laid out on the jibboom furling the jibs, when the storm seemed to reach its height, and a great vivid flash of lightning, like a sword of blue-green fire, lighting up the whole scene with its ghastly glare, fell, as it appeared to us, full upon the little craft, and the next instant, as the accompanying peal of thunder crashed and boomed in our ears, we all distinctly saw a flash, as of fire, leap up aboard her, accompanied by a great puff of whitish smoke. It was only momentary, and had the appearance of an explosion; but it was perfectly apparent that something more or less serious had happened to the little vessel. After an appreciable pause on the part of her crew, as though they were collecting their faculties in the face of some sudden disaster, they broke at once into a state of feverish activity, rushing hither and thither about her decks like men who are attempting to do half a dozen separate and distinct things at the same moment. Then came another flash of flame on board her; and all in a moment, as it seemed to us, the whole after part of her burst into a fierce blaze!

“Why, Gurney!” I exclaimed, turning to where the man stood with his sweetheart: “that last flash of lightning seems to have set the schooner on fire.”

“Yes,” he answered; “and she is blazing like a tar barrel. If the rain doesn’t come within the next two or three minutes they will have their work cut out to extinguish the flames.”

“Ay,” cut in Saunders, “you are right there, George. Look how she flares up. Why, she must be as dry as tinder. Ah! there they go with their buckets. But what is the use of buckets against a blaze like that; why don’t they get their hose along and start their head-pump? They’ll never put out that fire by balin’ up water from over the side.”

“No,” assented Gurney, “nor by means of a hose and head-pump either. Nothing but a good downpour of rain will do them any good now, and the rain seems to be holding off. Scissors! that ought to fetch it down”—as another terrific flash of lightning illuminated the whole scene from horizon to horizon.

But it did not; the lightning—fierce, vivid, and baleful—continued to flash, the thunder rolled and crashed and reverberated in one continuous deafening uproar; but the rain held off for a good five minutes longer, during which the fire aboard the schooner gained apace and spread with amazing rapidity. When at length the heavens opened, and the overladen clouds began to discharge their contents, it was not by any means the kind of tropical deluge that might have reasonably been expected, but simply a sudden brisk shower lasting less than a minute, and then ceasing abruptly. It was neither copious enough nor of sufficient duration to be of any appreciable service to the crew of the schooner, and indeed it did not perceptibly check the progress of the flames. To the onlookers aboard the Mercury it seemed that the other craft was irretrievably doomed; and such also seemed to be the opinion of her own crew, for they were presently seen to be frantically busy over the clearing away of the longboat, which was stowed on top of the main hatch, and the safety of which was now threatened by the rapidly advancing flames.

“Do you think that they will succeed in extinguishing the fire, George?” asked Grace Hartley, as she clung to her lover’s arm and gazed with wide-open eyes of anxiety at the progress of the conflagration.

“No,” answered Gurney unhesitatingly; “to be quite candid with you, dear, I do not. Whatever may be the cargo that the schooner carries, it is evidently of a highly combustible character, and now seems to be fairly ignited. The fire gains ground even as we stand and gaze; and if the crew could not conquer it at the outset, they are not likely to do so now. What think you, Mr Troubridge?”

“I quite agree with you,” I answered. “That schooner—”

“Then,” interrupted Grace passionately, with an impatient stamp of her foot on the deck, “if you really think that, what are we all standing here idly for? Why are we not doing something to help those poor fellows who are in danger of perishing in the flames?”

“Because, my dear, there is no need, as yet, at all events,” answered Gurney. “You see,” he continued, “they are clearing away their own boat; and if they can only contrive to get her into the water before she is irretrievably damaged they will be all right. They have but to cross that narrow space of water to reach us and safety. But as for us, we can do nothing. It would need two of us to take one of our quarter boats alongside that schooner in time to be of any service to those people; and with the weather as it is at this moment it would be the height of madness for us to make the attempt. For, suppose that this thunderstorm were to end in a heavy squall of wind—as it may at any moment—catching the boat, with Saunders and me in her, halfway or thereabout between the two vessels, what would be the result? Why, that we should be equally unable to reach the schooner or return to the Mercury. We should all part company; and the chances are that none of us would ever again meet in this world! No, no, I suppose we should all be willing to risk a great deal to help our fellow-creatures in extremity; but we must not lightly undertake an adventure that may be fatal to us, while of very problematical advantage to the others. Ah! see, there is the answer to your appeal, Gracie! They have cleared away the longboat, and now they are hoisting her out, none too soon either; for if my eyes do not deceive me, one gang have to sluice her with water to prevent her taking fire while the others are getting her over the side.”

It was even as Gurney had said; the flames had spread with such astounding rapidity that the schooner’s crew only saved the boat by the very skin of their teeth. But presently she splashed safely into the water alongside, and as she did so the schooner’s people seemed to pour over that vessel’s low rail in a body, scarcely giving themselves time to unhook the tackles before they flung out their oars and shoved off. Indeed, there was very urgent need for haste; for not only was the entire after part of the schooner ablaze by this time—the flames shooting straight up in the breathless air as high as the little vessel’s main truck—but within the last minute or so there had occurred that abrupt cessation which, in the case of tropical thunderstorms, is so frequently the precursor of a sudden and brief but exceedingly violent squall of wind. And if that threatened squall should burst its bonds and come shrieking and howling in fury across the surface of the sea, scourging it into a mad turmoil of foaming, leaping water and blinding spindrift, while the burnt-out crew of the schooner were making their passage across to the Mercury, it might be very bad for them; for even should they be fortunate enough to avoid capsizal, it might be exceedingly difficult, if not altogether impossible, for the ship, smitten and bowed down by the might of the tempest, to pause and pick them up.

Of course, as we fully expected, the boat headed straight for the Mercury; and the only question now was whether she would reach us before the brooding tempest broke loose and involved us all in its clutches. I glanced anxiously round the horizon, and was not reassured by what I saw; for the aspect of the heavens had rapidly grown so threatening that it looked as though the outburst must inevitably come within the next minute or two, while, strive as they might, the strangers could not get alongside us in less than ten minutes at the least. And we could do absolutely nothing to help them, for at this moment there was not the faintest perceptible movement of the atmosphere, and both craft lay as motionless as logs in a timber pond. I looked aloft at the vane at our masthead; it might have been made of cast iron for all the movement that it betrayed; I wetted my finger and held it up, turning it this way and that in the hope of detecting a draught, however slight; but there was nothing. A glance at the blazing hull of the schooner showed that the flames were shooting heavenward as straight as the flame of a candle burning in a vault. No, there was nothing to be done except to get a number of rope’s-ends ready to fling into the boat the moment that she came alongside, should she succeed in doing so; and this we did, flinging the coils of braces and what not off the pins to the deck in readiness to cast at the moment when perhaps a second more or less might make all the difference between life and death to some fourteen or fifteen of our fellow-creatures.

That the occupants of the boat were as fully alive as ourselves to the critical nature of the situation was clear from the desperate energy with which they toiled at the six oars they had thrown out, the stout ash blades bending almost to breaking point at each stroke and sending a long trail of tiny froth-flecked swirls seething and driving astern, as the men sprang and bent their backs to their work, while the water buzzed and foamed under the craft’s bluff bows. They were racing for their lives, and knew it! Fathom by fathom the heavy boat surged ahead over the oil-smooth surface of the black water, with the scowling sky writhing overhead, as though the spirit of the storm were struggling to burst its bonds and leap upon them. They were already so near at hand that we could hear their cries as they shouted encouragement to each other, when a sudden puff of air from the north-west swept over the ship, causing the topsails and staysail to momentarily fill, with a report like a musket-shot, with a quick jar and creaking of trusses, parrals, and block sheaves, before the canvas again collapsed to the masts with a rustling sound that to our overstrained senses seemed preternaturally loud.

“It is coming now; look there, over the starboard quarter!” shouted Gurney, pointing; and, putting his hands to his mouth, he yelled to those in the approaching boat: “Pull, men; pull for your lives, or you’ll miss us yet!”

I looked in the direction indicated, and, sure enough, it was as Gurney had said. The sky in that quarter was black as night, and beneath it was the long line of white foam that marked the progress of the approaching squall. It was racing down upon us with incredible speed, and, near as the boat was, it was evident that the squall must strike us before she could get alongside. And, once in the grip of that raving fury of wind, no earthly power could save those unfortunates, who were now fighting like maniacs to reach the ark of safety that floated so near—yet not near enough! Something must be done, some risk must be taken to help them. That we should, without effort of any sort, suffer ourselves to be cruelly snatched away far beyond the reach of those desperately struggling men, leaving them to miserably perish, was unthinkable!

“Back the fore topsail!” I yelled, springing down the poop ladder to the main deck and feverishly casting off the fore braces; “it is the only thing that we can do; we may lose our topmasts, but we must risk that. With our fore topsail aback we may perhaps be able to edge down upon and pick them up, otherwise we shall never set eyes upon them again.”

Working like demons, each of us seeming to be possessed, for the moment, of the strength of a dozen men, we got the head yards braced round and the braces made fast before the squall reached us; and then I sprang aft to the wheel, while Gurney and Saunders, snatching up as many loose coils of rope as they could grasp, stood by to drop them into the boat. As I reached the wheel and wrenched it hard a-starboard, the squall, with an indescribable fury of sound, struck us—fortunately well over the starboard quarter. With a report like a cannon-shot and a creaking and groaning of overstrained spars and timbers the Mercury buried her bows in the boiling sea and gathered way, paying off square before the wind as she did so. I let her go well off, until the longboat was broad on our starboard bow; then, putting the helm hard down, I brought the ship close to the wind, thus throwing her fore topsail aback, and, by the mercy of Providence, judging my distance with such nicety that the next moment the longboat, by this time full to her thwarts and utterly helpless, was scraping along under the shelter of our lee side, while the ship, suddenly arrested by her backed topsail, careened until her lee rail was level with the foam. Gurney and Saunders hove their rope’s-ends fair into the boat; but there was no need for them, the ship was bowed so steeply that the occupants were able to seize her rail and scramble inboard unaided. In as many seconds fourteen strange men had transferred themselves from the sinking longboat to our decks, while the boat, rasping astern along the ship’s side, capsized and turned bottom-up as she drove clear. Gurney flourished his hand to me as a sign that all was well, and then, as I once more put the helm up and allowed the ship to go off before the wind, he seized some three or four of the dazed strangers and invoked their aid to square the foreyard.

It was with a mighty sigh of relief that I presently resigned the wheel to Saunders and went forward to greet and welcome the rescued men; for, by the skin of our teeth we had saved them all in the very nick of time, and that, too, without parting so much as a ropeyarn. Furthermore, by an extraordinary stroke of fortune—good for us, although bad for them—we had, in the most unexpected manner, secured the services of enough hands to enable us to work the ship without being constantly worried as to the quantity of sail that we might safely venture to set. Therefore we were now in a position to avail ourselves to the utmost extent of every kind of weather, and could hope to bring our remarkable voyage to a speedy conclusion.

As I joined the group of strangers clustered about Gurney, down on the main deck, it was easy to determine, even before I came within sound of their tongues, that they were British—Australians, that is to say, for they one and all bore the well-marked characteristics of that sturdy, independent, self-reliant race. Gurney at once took it upon himself to perform the ceremony of introduction.

“This, mates,” said he, indicating me, “is our skipper, Mr Troubridge. He is but a youngster, as you may see for yourselves; but you may take my word for it that, so long as he commands, everything will go right with us. Our story is a long one, and a queer one—too long and too queer to be spun just now, so it must wait; but you will all be glad to know that we are bound for the port that you hail from; so, please God, it will not be long before you see your sweethearts and wives once more. This, Mr Troubridge, is Mr Thomson, chief mate of the schooner Seamew, blazing out yonder; and the rest are the remainder of her crew, whose names I have not yet had time to learn.”

“Welcome aboard the Mercury, Mr Thomson, and men of the Seamew!” said I. “I am heartily glad that, since it was your lot to meet with misfortune, we happened to be near enough at hand to pick you up. But what of your captain; where is he?”

“I am sorry to say, Mr Troubridge,” answered Thomson, “that Captain Peters and Mr Girdlestone, our second mate, were both struck dead by the flash of lightning that set the schooner afire; and we were obliged to leave ’em aboard to burn with her, since we had no time to do anything else. The Seamew was Cap’n Peters’ own property; and we were out after sandalwood, of which the schooner was more’n half-full when this misfortune happened to her. We fought the flames as long as we could, in the hope of savin’ her; but we never had a chance from the very first, for she was old, and as dry as the inside of a tinder-box, and she burned like a pine splinter. We hung on to her so long that we had to leave all our belongings aboard her, comin’ away with just what we stood up in, and we cut it so fine that if we’d delayed another minute we’d all be in Davy’s locker now.”

“Ay,” said I, “there is very little doubt of that, I think. However, a miss is as good as a mile, they say, and you are all here, except your unfortunate captain and second mate, so you must make yourselves as comfortable as you can until we arrive in Sydney. I am afraid I shall have to ask you to work your passages, for we are very short-handed, as you will have seen; but no doubt when we arrive—”

“Oh, that’s all right, sir!” cut in Thomson; “of course we’ll work our passages, and glad of the chance to do so. It’s a lucky thing for us that you were near enough to pick us up.”

So the matter was arranged, Gurney and Thomson each heading a watch of six men, while the cook and the steward of the Seamew respectively took charge of the Mercury’s galley and pantry, and Saunders promptly escaped from the cabin to the more congenial atmosphere of the forecastle, where he entertained the men, during the remainder of the voyage, with stories of our adventures, first on the island, and afterwards on the reef. But a timely hint from Gurney, terse and strong, kept his lips closed upon the subject of the pearls, of the existence of which on board not a man of the schooner’s crew ever became aware.

There is but little more that need be said in order to bring this story of a very remarkable and adventurous voyage to a close. The schooner continued to blaze fiercely—the flames fanned to ever-increasing fury by the strength of the wind—for about half an hour after we had run past her, when we suddenly lost sight of her; Thomson’s opinion being that by that time her upper works had been completely consumed, and that the sea had gained access to her interior, sending her charred remains to the bottom. True, the tail of the squall brought along a smart shower of rain that lasted about ten minutes, but it was over again before she disappeared, so that the alternative theory of Brady, her boatswain, that the rain extinguished the flames, found little acceptance with us. In any case it was not worth while returning to seek her, for, even had she been found, she could but have been a mere burnt-out shell, of no value to anyone. The squall blew itself out in about twenty minutes; but the wind continued to blow strongly all through the night, and it was not until sunrise on the following morning that the weather moderated sufficiently to induce Gurney to send the hands aloft to turn out the reefs and make sail. When I went on deck, however, at seven bells, it was glorious weather; the sky clear, save for a few light fleecy clouds drifting solemnly along out of the north-west, a moderate sea running, and the ship bowling gaily along under all plain sail and her starboard studding sails—a sight which I had not gazed upon for many a long day. We crossed the Equator during the forenoon of that day and, meeting with favourable weather for the remainder of the voyage, entered Port Jackson, without further adventure, some three weeks later, coming to an anchor close to Garden Island.

The arrival of the Mercury, so long overdue that she had been given up as lost, created quite a little local sensation, which was vastly increased when the history of the voyage was made public, to such an extent, indeed, that a Government ship was dispatched to the island with authority to arrest Wilde, Polson, and Tudsbery upon a charge of piracy, and bring them to Sydney for trial. The business of the ship, and the fact that Gurney, Saunders, Grace Hartley, and I would be required as witnesses at the trial, detained us all at Sydney until the return of the corvette from the island, some two months later.

The news which she brought back sent a thrill of horror throughout the colony. It was to the effect that upon her arrival at the spot, the latitude and longitude of which I had given, a small islet had been discovered which, upon examination, proved to be the crater of a volcano that had evidently been very recently in a state of violent activity; but no traces of life were to be found upon it, nor had the islet any resemblance to the extensive and beautiful island which we had described. The weather, however, proving favourable, the captain of the corvette had anchored his ship for several days close to the islet, and had caused an extensive series of soundings to be taken all round it, which, upon being plotted to a large scale, were of such a character as to leave no doubt that the islet was indeed the summit of the peak of Wilde’s island, and that the latter had most probably been engulfed, with its inhabitants, by the same cataclysm that had imprisoned the Mercury among the meshes of the pearl reef! Our escape, therefore, from the common destruction that had overtaken the rest had been an exceedingly narrow one, the margin of safety amounting, in fact, to less than three days; for there can be no question that, had the Mercury been at her moorings in the Basin, or even within a few miles of the island, when the catastrophe occurred, she could never have survived it.

The consignees of the Mercury’s original cargo—the names and addresses of whom were mentioned in the ship’s manifest, found by me, with the rest of the ship’s papers, in the captain’s desk—were of course only too glad to accept the cargo of sandalwood brought from the island, in lieu of the much less valuable merchandise originally consigned to them, and they at once chartered the ship to carry the wood to Canton, one of the partners—a Mr Henderson—going with it in the capacity of supercargo to dispose of it, upon arrival. There was not much difficulty in engaging another master, officers, and crew for the ship; and I subsequently learned that she arrived safely, that the cargo was speedily disposed of, tea purchased with the proceeds, and the ship dispatched with it to England, where she duly arrived; the net result of the adventure being a big profit for the fortunate consignees. These gentlemen were Scotchmen, and although persons of that nationality have the reputation of keeping a very tight hand upon the bawbees, I am bound to say that they treated Gurney, Saunders, and myself with a liberality, not to say generosity, that left nothing to be desired, although of course we had no claim on them. The result being that not only were we able to maintain ourselves most comfortably in Sydney while awaiting the return of the corvette from the island, but also to return afterwards to England as first-class passengers. That is to say, Gurney, Grace Hartley, and I did so; but Saunders remained in the colony and eventually became a prosperous and exceedingly wealthy sheep farmer. As for Gurney, he lost no time in making Grace Hartley his wife, I officiating as best man on the occasion.

We all three went home together in the cuddy of the same ship, and upon our arrival it was my happy privilege to be the means of opening the negotiations with his father—Sir George Burnley, baronet, of Chudleigh Grange, Devon—that resulted in a complete and permanent reconciliation between the two. Gurney—or Burnley, to give him his correct name—had learned his lesson while passing through the fires of adversity. He had learned, in the school of experience—that best of all schools—that the so-called pleasures of sin endure but for a very brief season and are inevitably followed by misery, suffering, shame, and self-contempt beyond all power of words to express; and he had the resolution and strength to pull himself together and become once more a man, in the best and highest sense of the term, before it was too late and mental, moral, and physical ruin, complete and irretrievable, had overtaken him. He had the joy of seeing his father’s belief and pride in him fully restored, and of making that father’s declining years easy, pleasant, and happy. Now he reigns in that father’s stead, honoured, respected, and beloved by all, and the pride and joy of his wife and children.

As for me, my pearls, when at length I had succeeded in converting them into money, produced so unexpectedly magnificent a fortune that not only was I enabled by its means to obtain a commanding interest in the corporation which owned the Gold Star line of sailing clippers, but also very materially to assist in converting that line from sail to steam. This was, of course, a very gradual process; and by the time that it was complete I was not only out of my apprenticeship but had worked my way up to the position of chief mate. Two voyages in this capacity sufficed to qualify me for the position of master; and now, in the time of my ripened experience, I hold the proud position of Commodore of the fleet, and have the pleasure of walking the bridge as commander of one of the finest passenger steamers that trade between England and the Australian ports.