CHAPTER XXIX. A VOLCANIC ISLAND.

I lost my senses after I had been in the water a few minutes: whether through being nearly strangled by the foam which broke incessantly over me, or through being struck by some fragment of the wreck I cannot say. Yet I must have retained my grip of the piece of spar I had grabbed hold of on being swept overboard with the proverbial tenacity of the drowning, for I found myself grasping it when I recovered consciousness. I lay on my back with my face to the sky, and my first notion was that I had dropped to sleep on the yacht’s deck, and that I had been awakened by rain falling in torrents. But my senses were not long in coming to me, and I then discovered that what I believed to be rain was salt spray flying in clouds upon and over me from a thunderous surf that was roaring and raging within a few strides. It was very dark, there was nothing to be seen but the white boiling of the near waters with the intermittent glancing of the heads of melting seas beyond. I felt with my hands and made out that I was lying on something as hard as rock, honeycombed like a sponge. This I detected by passing my hand over the surface as far as I could reach without rising. After a little I caught sight of a black shadow to the right thrown into relief by the broad yeasty throbbing amid which it stood. It was apparently motionless, and I guessed it to be a portion of the ‘Bride.’ The wind howled strongly, and the noise of the breaking seas was distracting. Yet the moment I had my mind, as I may say, fully, I was sensible of a heat in the air very nearly as oppressive as had been the atmosphere in the cabin of the yacht that evening; and this in spite of the wind which blew a stiff breeze and which was full of wet besides. Then it was that there entered my mind the idea that the yacht had struck and gone to pieces upon a volcanic island newly hove up in that sudden great flame which had leapt upon our sight over the ‘Bride’s’ bows some two or three hours before at a distance, as we had computed, of fifteen miles, and which had seemed to set the whole of the northern heavens on fire.

I felt round about me with my hands again; the soil was unquestionably lava, and the heat in it was a final convincing proof that my conjecture was right. I rose with difficulty, and standing erect looked about, but I could distinguish nothing more than a mere surface of blackness blending with and vanishing in the yelling and hissing night flying overhead. I fell upon my knees to grope in that posture some little distance from the surf to[287] diminish by my withdrawal something of the pelting of the pitiless storm of spray; and well it was that I had sense enough to crawl in this manner, for I had not moved a yard when my hand plunged into a hole to the length of my arm. The cavity was full of water, deep enough to have drowned me for all I knew, whilst the orifice was big enough to receive three or four bodies of the size of mine lashed together. There was no promise of any sort of shelter. The island, as well as I could determine its configuration by the surf which circled it, went rounding out of the sea in a small slope after the pattern of a turtle-shell. However, I succeeded in creeping to a distance where the spray struck me without its former sting, and then I stood up and putting my hands to the sides of my mouth shouted as loud as my weak condition would suffer me.

A voice deep and hoarse came back like an echo of my own from a distance, as my ear might conjecture, of some twenty paces or so.

‘Hallo! Who calls?’

‘I, Mr. Monson. Who are you.’

‘Cutbill,’ he roared back.

I brought my hands together, grateful to God to hear him, for how was I to know till then but that I might be the only survivor of the yacht’s company?

‘Can you come to me, Cutbill?’ I cried.

‘I don’t like to let go of the lady, sir,’ he answered.

‘Which lady?’ I shouted.

‘Miss Jennings.’

‘Is she alive, Cutbill?’

‘Ay, sir.’

By this time my sight was growing used to the profound blackness. The clouds of pallid foam along the margin of the island flung a sort of shadow of ghastly illumination into the atmosphere, and I fancied I could see the blotch the figure of Cutbill made to the right of me on the level on which I stood. I forthwith dropped on my knees again and cautiously advanced, then more plainly distinguished him, and in a few minutes was at his side. It was the shadowy group, the outlines barely determinable by my sight, even when I was close to, of the big figure of the sailor seated with the girl supported on his arm. I put my lips close to the faint glimmer of her face, and cried ‘Laura, dearest, how is it with you? Would God it had been my hand that had had the saving of you!’

She answered faintly, ‘Take me; let me rest on you?’

I put my arm round her and brought her head to my breast and so held her to me. Soaked as we were to the skin like drowned rats, the heat floating up out of the body of volcanic stuff on which we lay prevented us from feeling the least chill from the pouring of the wind through our streaming clothes.

‘Oh, my God, Laura!’ I cried, ‘I feared you were gone for ever when I lost my hold of you.’

[288]

‘The life-buoy you put on saved me,’ she exclaimed, so faintly, that I should not have heard her had not my ear been close to her lips.

‘The lady had a life-buoy on, sir,’ said the deep voice of Cutbill, ‘she was stranded alongside of me, and I dragged her clear of the surf and have been holding of her since, for this here soil is a cuss’d hard pillow for the heads of the likes of her.’

‘Are you hurt, Cutbill?’

‘No, sir, not a scratch that I’m aware of. I fell overboard and a swell run me ashore as easy as jumping. But I fear most of ’em are drownded.’

‘Lady Monson!’ I cried.

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘And my cousin?’

‘Mr. Monson!’ he exclaimed in a broken voice, ‘the instant I felt what had happened I laid hold of Sir Wilfrid to drag him on deck! He yelled out and clung, and ’twould have been like mangling the gentleman, sir, to have used my whole strength upon him if so be as my arms had been equal to the job of even making him budge. I gave up; I wanted to save my life, sir; I could hear the vessel going to pieces and reckoned upon his following me if I ran out. I fear he’s drownded, sir.’

‘Ah, great heaven! Poor Wilf! Merciful Father, that this desperate voyage should end thus!’

I felt the girl shuddering and trembling on my breast.

‘Darling,’ I cried, ‘take heart! Daylight has yet to tell us the whole story. How sudden! How shocking! Cutbill, you have lungs; for God’s sake, hail the darkness, that we may know if others are living!’

He did so; a faint halloo, sounding some distance from the right, replied. He shouted again and an answer was again returned, this time in another voice; it was feebler, but it proved at all events that there were others besides ourselves who had survived the destruction of the yacht. What the hour was I did not know. The night wore away with intolerable and killing slowness, the wind decreased, the sea moderated, the boiling of the surf that had been fierce for a long while took a subdued note, and the wind blew over us free of spray. Till daybreak I was cradling Laura on my arm. Frequently she would sit up to lighten the burthen of her form, but as often as she did so, again would she bring her head to my breast. What the dawn was to reveal I could not imagine, yet I felt so much happiness in the thought of Laura’s life being spared and in having her at my side, that I waited the disclosures of daybreak without dread.

At last there came a sifting of grey light into the east. By this time there was no more than a gentle wind blowing; but the sky had continued of an impenetrable blackness all night, and when day broke I witnessed the reason of the oppressive obscurity[289] in a surface of leaden cloud that lay stretched all over the face of the heavens without the least break visible in it anywhere.

It was natural that the moment light enough stole into the atmosphere to see by, my first look should be at the girl by my side. Her head was uncovered; I in slipping on the lifebuoy, or Cutbill in removing it from her, had bared her hair, and the beautiful gold of it lay like a cloud upon her back and shoulders. It was as dry as were our clothes; the heat of the island had indeed served us as an oven. She was deadly pale, hollow-eyed, with a shadow as of the reflection of a spring leaf under each eye; her lips blanched, her countenance piteous with its expression of fear. Her dress had been torn by the wreckage: more shipwrecked than she no girlish figure could ever have looked, yet her beauty stole through all like a spirit breathing in her, and I could not release her without first pressing her to my heart and kissing her hand and fondling it, whilst I thanked God that she was alive and that we were together.

The yacht had broken in half from a few feet abaft of where her foremast had stood. All the after part of her had disappeared; nothing remained but the bows with the black planks winding round, jagged, twisted, broken; an incredible ruin! The putty-coloured shore that looked to the eye to trend with something of the smoothness of pumice-stone to the wash of the surf was dark with wreckage. I saw several figures lying prone amongst this litter of ribs and planks and cases and the like; there were others again recumbent higher up—five of them I counted—a few hundred paces distant, two of whom, as the three of us sat casting our eyes about us, slowly rose to their legs to survey the scene. One of these was Finn, the other one of the crew of the ‘Bride.’

I exclaimed, pointing to the furthest of the three figures who continued recumbent, ‘Isn’t that a woman?’

Cutbill stared; Laura, whose eyes were keen, said, ‘Yes. Is it Henrietta or my maid?’

Finn perceived us and held up his hand, and made as if to come to us; but on a sudden he pressed his side, halted, and then slowly seated himself. I gazed eagerly around me for signs of further life. It was now clear daylight, with a thinning of the leaden sky in the east that promised a sight of the sun presently with assurance of a clear sky a little later on. It was to be easily seen now that this island which had brought about the destruction of the ‘Bride’ was a volcanic upheaval created in the moment of the prodigious blaze of light we had viewed in the north. It was of the form of an oyster-shell, going with a rounded slope to amidships from one margin to another, and was everywhere of a very pale sulphur colour. It was within a mile in circumference, and therefore, but a very short walk in breadth, and at its highest point rose to between twelve and fifteen feet above the sea. There stood, however, on the very apex of it, if I may so term the central point of its rounded back, a vast lump of rock, as I took it to be. But my eye ran over it incuriously. We were making towards[290] Finn and the others when I glanced at it, and my mind was so full that I gave the thing no heed.

It was necessary to walk with extreme caution. The island was like a sponge, as I have before said, punctured with holes big and little, some large as wells and apparently deep. But for these holes walking would have been easy, for everywhere between the surface was as smooth as if it had been polished. In many parts a sort of vapour-like steam crawled into the air. Now that the wind was gone you felt the heat of this amazing formation striking up into the atmosphere, and I confess my heart fell sick in me on considering how it should be when the sun shone forth in power and mingled the sting of its glory with the oven-like temperature of this fire-created island.

There were many dead fish about, some floating belly up in the wells, others dry, of all sizes and sorts, with the dark-blue, venomous form of a dead shark a full fifteen feet long close down by the edge of the sea, about forty paces to the left of the wreck.

Laura walked without difficulty. She leaned upon my arm, but there was no weight in her pressure. The lifebuoy had held her head well above water, and she had been swept ashore without suffering; the resting of her limbs, too, through the long hours of the night had helped her; there was comfort also in the dryness of her clothes, and I was very sensible likewise that my presence gave her heart and spirit.

‘It is Henrietta!’ she exclaimed.

Yes! the figure that at a distance might have passed for Lady Monson or Laura’s maid now proved the former. She had been resting some little distance apart from the others with her head upon her arm, but suddenly she sat upright and looked fixedly towards us. She, like Laura, was without covering to her head; her pomp of black hair fell with gipsy wildness to her waist; her posture was so still, her regard of us so stubbornly intent, that I feared to discover her mind was wanting.

‘I will go to her,’ said Laura.

Yet I witnessed the old recoil in her as though there was nothing in the most tragic of all conditions to bate her sister’s subduing influence. She withdrew her hand from my arm and pressed forward; as she approached, Lady Monson slowly rose, tottered towards her, threw her clasped hands upwards with her face upturned, and then fell upon Laura’s neck.

Finn called feebly to me, ‘God be praised you’re safe, Mr. Monson, and sound, I hope, sir? And how is it with ye, mate?’ addressing Cutbill.

I grasped his hand; the tears gushed into his eyes, and he pointed towards the wreck and to the bodies amongst the stuff that had been washed ashore, whilst he slowly shook his head. He looked grey, haggard, hollow, ill, most miserable, as though he had lived ten years since last night and was sick and near his end.

[291]

‘Cap’n,’ cried Cutbill in a broken voice, ‘’twas no man’s fault. Who’s to keep a look-out for islands after this pattern?’

I seated myself by Finn’s side. ‘Keep up your heart,’ said I. ‘You are not hurt, I trust?’

‘Something struck me here,’ said he, putting his hand to his left breast, ‘whilst I was swimming, and it makes me feel a bit short-winded. But it isn’t that what hurts me, Mr. Monson. It’s the thoughts of them who’ve gone, and the sight of what was yesterday, sir, the sweetest craft afloat. Who’d have thought she’d have crumbled up so fast? reg’larly broke her back and gone into staves aft! She was staunch, but only as a pleasure wessel is.’

I asked Cutbill to examine the people who were lying on what I must call the beach, and report if there was any life in them.

‘My cousin is drowned,’ I said to Finn.

‘Oh, blessed God!’ he answered. ‘Cutbill knows; he couldn’t get him out of his berth, I allow!’

‘Ay, that was it,’ I said, ‘but this is no time for grieving for the dead, Finn. Regrets are idle. How are we who are spared to save our lives? Are the yacht’s boats all gone?’

I ran my eye along the beach and over the sea, but nothing resembling a boat was visible. The sailor that had stood up with Finn when I had first caught sight of them had seated himself a little distance away, Lascar fashion, and I noticed him at that moment dip his forefinger into a hole close beside him, suck it and then drink by lifting water in the palm of his hand. I called to him, ‘Is it fresh?’

‘Pretty nigh, sir,’ he answered.

There was such another little hole near me half full of water, as indeed was every well or aperture of the kind that I saw. I dipped as the sailor had and found the water slightly, but only very slightly, brackish. This I concluded was owing to the overwhelming weight of rain that had followed the upheaval of this island overflowing the hollows and holes in it so abundantly as to drown the salt water, with which, of course, the cavities had been filled when this head of lava had been forced to the surface. I bade Finn dip his hand and taste, and told him that our first step must be to hit upon some means of storing a good supply before the heat should dry up the water.

There were two sailors lying close together a few yards from where the seaman had squatted himself, and I called to him to know if they were alive. He answered ‘Yes,’ and shouted to them, on which they turned their heads, and one of them languidly rose to his elbows, the other lay still.

‘It will be the wreckage that drownded most of them and that hurt them that’s come off with their lives,’ exclaimed Finn. ‘It was like being thrown into whirling machinery. How many shall we be able to muster? I fear they’re but bodies, sir,’ indicating the figures over which Cutbill was stooping.

All this while Laura and her sister were standing and con[292]versing. I was starting to walk to the wreckage that stood at the foreshore, when Laura slightly motioned to me to approach her. I at once went to her, watching every foot of ground I measured, for the island was just a surface of pitfalls, and one could not imagine how deep the larger among them might prove. Lady Monson bowed to me with as much dignity as if she were receiving me in a ball-room. Her face looked like a dead woman’s vitalised by some necromantic agency, so preternatural was the ghastly air produced by the contrast between the tomb-like tincture of the flesh and the raven blackness of her mass of flowing hair, and the feverish glow in her large dark eyes. I returned her salutation, and she extended a lifeless, ice-cold hand.

‘I am asking Laura what is to become of us,’ she exclaimed with a distinct hint of her imperious nature in her voice, and fastening her eyes upon me as from a habit of commanding with them.

‘I cannot tell,’ I answered; ‘our business is to do the best we can for ourselves.’

‘How many are living?’ she asked.

‘We do not as yet know, but I fear no more than you see alive. My cousin is drowned, I fear.’

Her eyes fell, she drew a deep breath and continued looking down; then her gaze, full of a sudden fire, flashed to my face again.

‘I am not accountable for his death, Mr. Monson. Why do you speak significantly of this dreadful thing? I did not desire his death. I would have saved his life had the power to do so been given to me. Oh God!’ she cried, ‘it is cruel to talk or to look so as to make me feel as if the responsibility of all this were mine!’

She clasped one hand over another upon her heart, drawing erect her fine figure into a posture full of indignant reproach and passionate deprecation. Indeed, had I never met her before and not known better, I should have taken her to be some fine tragedy actress who could not perform in the humblest article of an everyday commonplace part without dressing her behaviour with the airs of the stage.

‘Pardon me,’ I exclaimed, ‘you mistake. I meant nothing significant. I thought you would wish to know if your husband had been spared. This is no moment for discussing any other question in the world but how we are to deliver ourselves from this terrible situation.’

As I turned to leave them I thought she regarded me with entreaty, almost with wistfulness, if such eyes as hers could ever take that expression, but she remained silent; and giving my love a smile—for my love she was now, and I cannot express how my heart went to her as she stood pale, worn, heavy-eyed, but lacking nothing of her old tenderness and sweetness and fairness by the side of her sister, listening timidly to the haughty, commanding creature’s words—I walked to meet Cutbill, who was slowly returning from his inspection of the bodies.

[293]

‘They’re all dead, sir,’ he exclaimed.

‘Ah!’ I cried.

‘There’s poor old Mr. Crimp——’ his voice failed him. He added, a little later, ‘they look more to have been killed than drownded, sir.’

‘Sir Wilfrid?’

‘No, he isn’t amongst them.’

We stood together looking towards the bodies.

‘Cutbill,’ said I, ‘We must all turn to now and collect what we can from the wreck that may prove useful to us. There’s nothing to eat here saving dead fish which will be rotting presently.’

The sea stretched in lead under the lead of the sky saving in the far east, where the opening of the heavens there had shed a pearly film upon it bright with sunrise. The swell had flattened and was light, and rolled sluggishly to the island, sliding up and down the smooth incline soundlessly, save when now and again some head of it broke and boiled and rushed backwards white and simmering. I sent a long look round, but there was nothing in sight. One could follow the ocean girdle sheer round the island with but the break only of the queer rugged mass of rock in the centre where the slope came to its height. The line of shore which the remains of the yacht centred was a stretch of some hundred and fifty feet of porous rock like meerschaum in places, the declivity very gradual. It was covered with wreckage, and remains of the vessel continued to be washed ashore by the set and hurl of the swell.

I went to work with Cutbill to haul high and dry whatever we were able to deal with. We were presently joined by two of the sailors. Finn and the other man made an effort to approach, but I perceived they were too weak and would be of no use to us, and I called to them to continue resting themselves. Laura and Lady Monson were seated together and watched us. I could not gather that they conversed; at least, though I often directed a glance at them, I never observed that they looked at each other as people do who talk.

We toiled a long hour, and in that time had stacked at a good distance from the wash of the sea a store of articles of all kinds: casks of flour, salt beef, biscuit for forecastle use, a cask of sherry, some cases of potted meats, and other matters which I should only weary you by cataloguing. Had the shore been steep too we should probably have got nothing, but it shelved gently far past the point where the yacht had struck, and as the goods had floated out of the yacht they were rolled up like pebbles of shingle by the swell till they stranded; and, as I have said, even as we were busy in collecting what we wanted other articles came washing towards us. Every cask and barrel that was recoverable we saved for the sake of the drink it might contain. Amongst other things we succeeded in dragging high and dry the yacht’s foresail. This was a difficult[294] job, for first it had to be cut from the gear that held it to its wreck of spar, and then we had to haul it ashore, which was as much as the four of us could manage. We also saved the yacht’s chest of tools, a box of Miss Laura’s wearing apparel, and a small chest of drawers which had stood in my poor cousin’s cabin. Cutbill and another seaman who stood the firmest of the rest of us on their shanks had to wade breast-high before we could secure many of these goods which showed in the hollow of the swell but were too heavy to be trundled further up by the heave of the water, whose weight was fast diminishing. There was little risk, but it took time; plenty of rope had come ashore, and we secured lines to the men whilst they carried ends in their hands to make fast to the articles they went after. Then they waded back to us and the four of us hauled together, and in this way, as I have said, we saved an abundance of useful things.

There was plenty yet to come at, but we were forced to knock off through sheer fatigue. Our next step was to get some breakfast. I was very eager that poor Finn and the man that was lying near him should be rallied, and counted on a substantial meal and a good draught of wine going far towards setting them on their legs again.

‘Cutbill,’ said I, ‘whilst I overhaul the stores for breakfast, will you take Dowling,’ referring to the stronger of the two men who had joined us, ‘and bury those bodies there? They make a terrible sight for the ladies to see. I have not your strength of heart, Cutbill; the handling of the poor creatures would prove too much for me. Yet if you think it unreasonable that I should not assist——’

‘Oh, no, sir! it’s a thing that ought to be done. We shall have to carry ’em t’other side. They may slip into deep water there.’ He called to Dowling, and together they went to the bodies.

The carpenter’s chest was padlocked. Happily I had a bunch of keys in my pocket, one of which fitted. The chest was liberally furnished; we armed ourselves with chisel and hammers, a gimlet and the like, with which tools we had presently opened all that we needed to furnish us with a hearty repast. We stood casks on end for tables, and boxes and cases served as seats. There were sailors’ knives in the tool-chest, and we emptied and cleaned a jar of potted meat to use as a drinking vessel. The prostrate seaman, whose name was Johnson, was too weak to rise: so I sent Head to him, this fellow being one of the sailors who had worked with us on the beach, with a draught of sherry, some biscuits, and tinned meat, and had the satisfaction of seeing him fall to after he had tossed down the wine. Finn managed to join us, but he ate little and seemed broken down with grief.

There is much that I find hard to realise when I look back and reflect upon the incidents of this wild excursion of which I have done my best to tell you the story; but nothing seems so dream-like[295] as this our first meal upon that newly-created spot of sulphurous rock in the deepest solitude of the heart of the mighty Atlantic. The leaden curtain had gradually lifted off the face of the east, leaving a band of white-blue sky there ruled off by the vapour in a line as straight as the horizon. The sun floated clear in it; his slanting beam had flashed up the waters midway beneath into an azure of the delicate paleness of turquoise; but all the western side lay of a leaden hue yet under the shadow of the immense stretch of almost imperceptibly withdrawing vapour. At one cask sat Laura and Lady Monson. The weak draught of wind kept my sweetheart’s golden hair trembling; but Lady Monson’s hung motionless upon her back; it made one think of a thunder cloud when one looked at it and noticed the lightning of her glance as she sent her eyes in a tragic roll from the distant horizon to the fragment of rock and on to the island slope with the great strange bulk of rock nodding, as it seemed, on top; and the corpse-like whiteness of her face was a sort of stare in itself to remind you of the bald, stormy glare you sometimes see in the brow of a tempest lifting sombre and sulkily past the sea-line. Finn’s eyes clung with drooping lids to the fragment of the ‘Bride’; Head reclined near me in a sailor’s reckless posture, feeding heartily; down on the beach the figures of Cutbill and Dowling were passing out of sight with one or another of their dreadful burthens and then returning. None of us seemed able to look that way.

‘All yon wessel’s company saving the eight of us gone!’ exclaimed Finn. ‘And she’s what? Look at her. Just the shell of a yacht’s head. Oh, my God, Mr. Monson, how terrible sudden things do happen at sea!’

‘I never would ha’ believed that the “Bride” ’ud tumble to pieces like that though, capt’n,’ exclaimed Head.

‘Oh, man,’ cried Finn, ‘the swell lifted and dropped her. Didn’t ye feel it? Poor Sir Wilfrid! Mr. Monson, sir—I’d take his place if he could be here.’

‘I believe it, Finn. I am sure you would,’ I said with a swift glance at Lady Monson, whose head sank as she caught the poor fellow’s remark.

‘Has this island been thrown up from the very bottom of the sea?’ asked Laura.

‘From the very bottom of the sea,’ I answered, ‘and from a depth out of soundings too. It is the head of a mountain of lava created in a flash of fire, and taller, maybe, from base to peak than half-a-dozen Everests one on the top of another.’

‘Do not ships sail this way?’ said Lady Monson.

‘Plenty of them, my lady,’ answered Finn. ‘No fear of our being long here. A hisland in these waters where it is all supposed to be clear is bound to bring wessels close in to view it. The “’Liza Robbins” oughtn’t to be fur off.’ He shuddered and cried, ‘Poor Jacob Crimp! poor old Jacob! Gone! and the werry echo of the yarn he was spinning me last night ain’t yet off my[296] ears.’ He buried his long, rugged face in his hands, shaking his head.

‘Is there any means of escaping should a vessel not pass by?’ inquired Lady Monson.

‘We must pin our faith on being sighted and taken off,’ I answered.

‘But where are we to live meanwhile? What is there on this horrible spot to shelter us?’ she exclaimed with a sudden start, and darting a terrified look around her. ‘If stormy weather should come, the waves will sweep this island. How shall we be able to cling to it? All our provisions will be washed away. How then shall we live?’

‘It’ll take a middling sea to sweep this here rock, your ledship,’ said Johnson feebly. ‘But it is to be swept capt’n. What’s the height o’ un?’

‘Two fadom end on, I allow,’ said Head.

‘Silence!’ roared Finn, putting the whole of his slender stock of vitality as one should suppose into his shout. ‘What d’ye want? to scare all hands by jawing? My lady, there’s nothen to be afraid of. It blew strong last night arter the yacht had stranded; but this island wasn’t swept or we shouldn’t be here.’

I met my sweetheart’s frightened eyes, and to change the subject asked Lady Monson if she had reached the shore unaided.

‘No,’ she answered. ‘I owe my life to the sailor who is with that big seaman down there,’ meaning Dowling. ‘I am unable to explain. I was unconscious before I left the yacht.’

‘Her ladyship was washed overboard,’ said Finn. ‘Dowling, who was swimming, got one of his hands foul of your hair, my lady. He kept hold, towed your ladyship as the swell ran him forrads, felt ground, and hauled ye ashore. He behaved well.’

‘My poor maid is drowned!’ cried Laura.

‘Too many, miss, too many! Oh, my God, too many!’ muttered poor Finn.

Meanwhile my eye had been resting incuriously upon the singular lump of rock that stood apparently poised on the highest slope in the very centre of the island. On a sudden I started to a perception that for the instant I deemed purely fanciful. The block of stuff was distant from where we were eating our breakfast some two hundred and eighty to three hundred yards. The complexion of it whilst the sky was in shadow had so much of the meerschaum-like tint of the island that one easily took it to be a mass of lava identical with the rest of the volcanic creation; but the sun was now pouring his brilliant white fires upon it, and I noticed a deal of sparkling in it as though it were coated with salt or studded with flints of crystal, whilst the bed in which it lay and the slope round about were of a dead, unreflecting pale yellow. My fixed regard attracted the attention of the others.

One of the two seamen looked and called out, ‘That ain’t a part of the island, sir.’

[297]

‘What form does it take to your fancy?’ I asked, addressing my companions generally.

There was a pause and Laura said, ‘It looks like a ship, an unwieldy vessel coming at us. Do you notice two erections like broken masts?’

Finn peered under his hand.

‘It certainly looks uncommonly like as if it had been a ship in its day,’ he exclaimed, ‘but these ’ere convulsions, I am told, are made up o’ fantastics.’

Cutbill and his companion were now approaching; they were fiery hot, their faces crimson, and they moved with an air of distress. Yet Cutbill made shift to sing out as he approached, pointing as he spoke, ‘Mr. Monson, there’s a ship ashore up there, sir. You get the shape of her plain round the corner.’

‘Come, lads!’ I cried, ‘sit and fall to. There’s plenty to eat here and drink to give you life. You have got well through a bitter business. Finn, do you feel equal to inspecting that object?’

‘Ay, sir,’ he answered. ‘I’m drawing my breath better. But it’s the mind, Mr. Monson—it’s the mind.’

‘Then come, all of us who will,’ I cried. ‘Laura, here is my arm for you, and here is a pocket handkerchief too to tie round your head.’

Lady Monson looked at her sister and rose with her. Laura came to my side and we started.