The Island Home Part 8

The sea had now resumed its usual appearance, and every trace of the water-spout was gone, so that it was impossible to fix the spot where it had broken. Not a vestige of the canoe, or of her ill-fated company, was anywhere to be seen. We sailed backward and forward in the neighbourhood of the place, carefully scrutinising the surface in every direction, and traversing several times the spot, as nearly as we could determine it, where the canoe had last been seen: but our search was fruitless: the long billows swelled and subsided with their wonted regularity, and their rippled summits glittered as brightly in the sunshine as ever, but they revealed no trace of those whom they had so suddenly and remorselessly engulfed.

The water-spout which had first been seen, had disappeared, and a few heavy clouds in the zenith alone remained, as evidences of the terrific phenomenon which we had just witnessed.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

OUR ISLAND HOME.

THE ILLUSION OF THE GOLDEN HAZE--THE WALL OF BREAKERS--A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE--THE ISLET OF PALMS.

"Keel never ploughed that lonely sea, That isle no human eye hath viewed; Around it still in tumult rude, The surges everlastingly, Burst on the coral-girded sh.o.r.e With mighty bound and ceaseless roar; A fresh unsullied work of G.o.d, By human footstep yet untrod."

The native lad now seemed to be quite overwhelmed with grief. He had made no manifestations of it while we were endeavouring to discover some trace of his companions, but when at length we relinquished the attempt, and it became certain that they had all perished, he uttered a low, wailing cry, full of distress and anguish, and laying his head upon his hands, sobbed bitterly.

The Frenchman had told us that the island lay to the northward; and we now put the head of the boat in that direction, steering by the sun, which was just setting.

When the first violence of the boy's grief had somewhat abated, Arthur spoke to him gently, in the dialect of the Society Islands. He listened attentively, turning his large eyes upon Arthur's face with an expression of mingled timidity and interest and replied in a low, musical voice. They seemed to understand one another, and talked together for some time. The language spoken by the boy, differed so little, as Arthur told us, from that of the Tahitians, that he easily gathered the meaning of what he said. Upon being questioned as to the distance of the island, and the course which we must steer in order to reach it, he pointed to a bright star, just beginning to be visible in the north-east.

It is customary with the South-sea Islanders, before setting out on their long voyages, in which it is necessary to venture out of sight of land, to select some star by which to regulate their course in the night-time; this they call the "aveia," or guiding star of the voyage.

They are thus enabled to sail from island to island, and from group to group, between which all intercourse would otherwise be impossible without a compa.s.s. The star now pointed out to us, had been fixed upon by the companions of the little islander, at the commencement of their ill-fated voyage, as marking the direction of the home which they were destined never to regain. Among other things, we learned from the boy, that his native island, which we were now endeavouring to reach, was the largest of a group of three, over all of which his father's authority, as chief or king, extended: that there were six whites living among them, who had arrived there many years before, with the one who had just perished, and had come from an uninhabited island to the southward, upon which they had been wrecked.

During the night the wind continued fair, and animated by the hopes to which the statements of the little native had given rise, we renewed our watch, which had lately been discontinued, and sailed steadily northward, cherishing a strong confidence that we should reach land before morning.

The second watch--from a little after midnight to dawn--fell to me. As it began to grow light I almost feared to look northward, dreading the shock of a fresh disappointment, that must consign us again to the benumbing apathy from which we had yesterday rallied.

There seemed to me to be something unusual in the atmosphere, that impeded, or rather confused and bewildered the sight; and when the sun rose, I had not made out anything like land. It was not mist or fog, for the air was dry, and there were already indications of a fiercely hot day, though it was yet fresh and cool. The sky above us, too, was perfectly clear, all the clouds seemed to have slid down to the horizon, along which a white army of them was marshalled, in rounded fleecy ma.s.ses, like Alpine peaks towering one above another, or shining icebergs, pale and cold as those that drift in Arctic seas.

One by one my companions awoke to learn the failure, thus far, of all the sanguine expectations of the preceding evening. The native boy could suggest no reason why we had not reached the island, and when questioned on the subject, and told that we had steered all through the night by the "aveia," he merely shook his head with a bewildered and hopeless look. Max, on perceiving that we were still out of sight of land, threw himself down again in the bottom of the boat without speaking a word, where he remained with his eyes closed as if sleeping.

Arthur, after some further conversation with the little islander, came to the conclusion that in steering due north, we had not made sufficient allowance for the strong current setting westward; and he proposed that we should now sail directly east, to which no objection was made, most of us having at last come to feel that it could matter little what course we thenceforth steered. He accordingly took the direction of things into his own hands: the wind, which had moderated, was still from the west, and he put the boat before it, and lashed the helm. The peculiar appearance of the atmosphere still continued. During the morning a number of tropic birds flew by us, the first that we had seen since our separation from the ship. About noon, two noddies alighted on the gaff, and the little native climbed the mast after them; but though they are generally so tame, or so stupid, as to permit themselves to be approached and taken with the hand, these flew away before he could seize them. We hailed the appearance of these birds as a favourable omen, neither species being often seen at any considerable distance from land. It was, I suppose, about an hour after this, that happening to look back, I saw what appeared to be a high island, covered with tall groves of palms, some two miles distant. The elevated sh.o.r.es, and the green tops of the trees, were plainly visible; but just at the point where land and water met, there was a kind of hazy indistinctness in the view. We were sailing directly from it, and I could not understand how we had pa.s.sed as near as we must have done, without observing it.

Browne, catching sight of it almost at the same time with myself, uttered an exclamation that quickly aroused the attention of the rest, and we all stood for a moment gazing, half incredulously, upon the land which seemed to have started up so suddenly out of the sea, in the very track which we had just pa.s.sed over.

Arthur alone, appeared to be but little moved; he looked long and intently, without uttering a word.

"This is singular--very singular!" said Morton. "It seems as though we must have sailed over the _very_ spot where it lies."

"Unless I am mistaken," said Arthur, "we have been going backward for some time past: we must be in a very powerful current, which is carrying us in a direction contrary to that in which we are heading: the wind is so light that this is not impossible."

"I believe you are right," said Morton, "I can account for it in no other way."

"We had better then pull down the sail, and take the benefit of the full force of the current," resumed Arthur: this was accordingly done, and the mast unstepped.

A short time pa.s.sed, during which we appeared to be steadily drawing nearer to the land. The sh.o.r.e itself where it emerged from the ocean, we could not see with perfect distinctness: a fine, golden haze, like a visible atmosphere, waved and quivered before it, half veiling it from sight, and imparting to it an uncertain, though bright and dazzling aspect: but this appearance was confined to the lower part of the land; the bold sh.o.r.es and high groves were clearly defined.

"I trust we are not the subjects of some fearful illusion," said Browne, breaking a long silence, during which all eyes had been rivetted upon the island; "but there is something very strange about all this--it has an unearthly look."

As he spoke, the bright haze which floated over the sea near the surface, began to extend itself upward, and to grow denser and more impervious to the sight: the wooded sh.o.r.es became indistinct and dim, and seemed gradually receding in the distance, until the whole island, with its bold heights and waving groves, dissolved and melted away like a beautiful vision.

"What is this?" exclaimed Browne, in a voice of horror. "I should think, if I believed such things permitted, that evil spirits had power here on the lonely sea, and were sporting with our misery."

"It is a mirage," said Arthur quietly, "as I suspected from the first.

But courage! though what we have seen was an optical illusion, there must be a real island in the distance beyond, of which this was the elevated and refracted image. It cannot, I think, be more than thirty or forty miles off, and the current is sweeping us steadily towards it."

"I suppose then," said Morton, "that we can do nothing better, than to trust ourselves entirely to this current which must in fact be a pretty powerful one--at least as rapid as the Gulf Stream."

"We can do nothing better until the wind changes," replied Arthur, cheerfully; "at present I am disposed to think we are doing very well, and fast approaching land."

But there was no change of the wind, and we continued hour after hour, apparently making no progress, but in reality, as we believed, drifting steadily westward. All through the day we maintained a vigilant watch, lest by any possibility we should miss sight of the island which Arthur was so confident we were approaching. Late in the afternoon we saw a flock of gannets, and some sooty tern; the gannets pa.s.sing so near that we could hear the motion of their long twisted wings. Later still, a number of small reef-birds pa.s.sed over head; all were flying westward.

This confirmed Arthur in his belief of the proximity of land. "See,"

said he, "these little reef-birds are bound in the same direction with the others, and with ourselves; you may depend upon it, that the sea-fowl we have seen, are hastening homeward to their nests, on some not far distant sh.o.r.e."

So fully did I share this confidence, that I commenced a calculation as to the time at which we might expect to reach land. a.s.suming it to have been thirty miles distant at the time when we had seen its spectrum, by means of the refraction, arising from a peculiar state of the atmosphere; and estimating the rate of the current at three miles an hour, I came to the conclusion that we could not even come in sight of it until late at night; and it was therefore without any strong feeling of disappointment, that I saw the day fast drawing to a close, and nothing but sky and ocean yet visible.

The sun had already set, but the long tract of crimson and flame-coloured clouds that glowed in the horizon where he had disappeared, still reflected light enough to render it easy to distinguish objects in that quarter, when I was startled by a cry of joyful surprise from the native boy, who, shading his eyes with his hands, was looking intently westward. After a long and earnest gaze, he spoke eagerly to Arthur, who told us that the boy thought he saw his native island. Looking in the same direction, I could make out nothing.

Arthur and Browne spoke of a brilliantly white line, narrow, but well-defined against the horizon, as being all that they could see.

Morton, who was very keen-sighted, thought that he distinguished some dark object beyond the low white band seen by the others. As the light gradually failed, we lost sight of this appearance. It was some hours before the rising of the moon, which we awaited with anxiety. She was now at her full, and when at length she came up out of the sea, her disc, broad and red like a beamless sun, seemed to rest, dilated to preternatural size, upon the edge of the last wave that swelled against the horizon. As she ascended the sky, she shed over the ocean a flood of silvery light, less glaring, but almost as bright as that of day.

The wonderful brilliancy of the moon and stars within the tropics, is one of the first things noted by the voyager. It may be owing to the great clearness and transparency of the atmosphere: but whatever the cause, their light is much more powerful than in higher lat.i.tudes, and they seem actually nearer, and of greater magnitude.

We now looked eagerly westward again; the snow-white line, of which the others had spoken, was by this time distinctly visible to me also, and beyond it, too plainly relieved against the clear blue of the sky, to admit of doubt or illusion, were the high outlines of a tropical island, clothed with verdure to its summit.

Again the little islander shouted joyously, and clasped his hands, while the tears streamed down his olive cheeks.

He recognised his native island, the smallest and most easterly of the three, of which his father was the chief. We should soon come in sight of the remaining two, he said, which were lower, and lay to the north and south of it; he explained that the appearance, like a low white line running along the base of the island, was caused by the surf, bursting upon a coral reef about a mile from the sh.o.r.e.

Here then, at last, was the land which we had at one time despaired of ever beholding again, and now we were well a.s.sured that it was no airy phantasm; yet strange as it may seem, our feelings were not those of unmingled joy.

A thousand vague apprehensions and surmises of evil, began to suggest themselves, as we approached this unknown sh.o.r.e, inhabited by savages, and under the dominion of a savage. We doubted not that we might depend upon the good-will, and friendly offices of the little native, but we felt at the same time, that the influence of one so young, might prove insufficient for our protection.

We were in some measure acquainted with the savage customs, the dark and cruel rites, that prevailed among the Polynesian races generally, and had often listened with horror, to the recital of what Arthur and his uncle had themselves seen, of their b.l.o.o.d.y superst.i.tions, and abominable practices. As I looked into the faces of my companions, it was easy to perceive that they were possessed by anxious and gloomy thoughts.

Meanwhile, the current continued to sweep us steadily onward toward the sh.o.r.e, the outlines of which became every moment more distinct.

Occasionally a cloud drifted athwart the moon, and cast a soft shade upon the sea, obscuring the view for a time; but when it had pa.s.sed, the land seemed to have drawn perceptibly nearer during the interval. At length, when the night was far advanced, and the island was right before us, at the distance of scarcely a mile, the native lad, who had been gazing wistfully toward it for the last half-hour, uttered a plaintive cry of disappointment. He had looked long and anxiously, for the appearance of the two remaining islands of his father's group, but in vain; and now he yielded reluctantly to the conviction, that he had been deceived by the white line of surf, similar to that which bounded on one side his native island, and that he had never before seen the one which we were approaching. This discovery was a relief to me, and removed a weight of apprehension from my mind. The thought of being cast upon a desert and uninhabited sh.o.r.e, seemed less dreadful, than that of falling into the power of a tribe of savage islanders, even under circ.u.mstances which would probably secure us a friendly reception.

But now a strange and unforeseen difficulty presented itself. Between us and the island, stretched a barrier reef, running north and south, and curving westward; and appearing, as far as we could see, completely to surround it. Along the whole line of this reef the sea was breaking with such violence as to render all approach dangerous; neither could we espy any break or opening in it, through which to reach the sh.o.r.e.

Towards this foaming barrier the current was rapidly bearing us, and we were too feeble to struggle long against its force. To permit ourselves to be carried upon the reef would be certain destruction, and our only hope of safety seemed to lie in discovering some inlet through it. Our true situation flashed upon me all at once; I had not before thought of the impossibility of receding. Glancing at Arthur, I caught his eye, and saw that he comprehended the full extent of the danger. "We are near enough to see any break in the reef," said he, "let us now take to the oars, and coast along it in search of one."

This was accordingly done. But it was not until we had pulled along the sh.o.r.e for some time, and found that in spite of our endeavours to preserve our distance from it, we were steadily forced nearer, that the rest seemed aware of the imminence of the danger.

"The current is carrying us among the breakers," exclaimed Morton, at length, "though we are heading rather away from the sh.o.r.e, we are getting closer every moment." This appalling fact was now apparent to all.

"The wind seems to have died away," said Browne, "at any rate there is not enough of it to help us: we must put about and pull out of the reach of this surf, or we are lost."

"How long do you suppose we can continue that?" said Arthur. "No, our only hope is in finding an entrance through the reef, and that speedily."

We now steered a little farther away, and strained at the oars, as those who struggle for life. Occasionally, when lifted on the crest of a wave, we caught a transient glimpse of a smooth expanse of water beyond the foaming line of surf, and extending from the inner edge of the reef, to the sh.o.r.e of the island. The tall tops of the palms bordering the beach, seemed scarcely a stone's throw distant and you could fancy that, but for the roar of the breakers, you might hear the rustling of their long, drooping leaves; but it only added to the horror of our situation, to see that safe and peaceful haven, so near, yet so inaccessible.

In some places the reef rose quite out of the water; in others, it was, in nautical phrase, "all awash;" but nowhere could we attempt a landing with safety. All the while, too, it was evident that in spite of our desperate exertions, we were being driven nearer and nearer the breakers. This kind of work had continued almost an hour, when our strength began to fail.