Part 8 (1/2)
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 suns.h.i.+ne 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, cheris.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 s.h.i.+p. 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.”