Colymbia/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I.
A VOYAGE AND ITS END.
MY father, the Rev. Athanasius Smith, was the incumbent of a rectory on the east coast of England. Besides the income he derived from this post, he had a moderate patrimony, which enabled him to live comfortably, and to give his children, two boys, a good education. My name is De Courcy, that of my brother Howard. Smith, in spite of the many noble and illustrious persons of that name, is considered rather a plebeian appellation; so the Smiths are much addicted to bestowing aristocratic christian names on their children, in order to neutralize the supposed vulgarity of the patronymic. My father was not exempt from this weakness; hence our high-sounding names.
We were sent as day-boarders to a large endowed school not far from the rectory, where the usual excellent education of such establishments, consisting chiefly of much Latin and Greek, and a little French, writing and arithmetic, was duly taught, and great attention was paid to the religion and morals of the school boys. English grammar and composition were, as in most public schools, much neglected, which will account for the defects that may be visible in my style; but it was never supposed that I should one day become an author, nor should I have ever thought of writing a book, had it not been that I am in a manner forced to do so by the strangeness of the adventures that have fallen to my lot. This digression was required to justify my appearance as an author and to excuse my unpolished style. The truthfulness of my narrative will, I hope, compensate for the absence of the graces of composition.
The boys of our school supplemented their mental education by a physical one, in which they learned thoroughly the games of cricket, racquets, football, and became adepts in running, leaping, rowing, swimming, and all other manly and athletic exercises. The vicinity of the sea and a long reef of rocks extending far out from the shore beyond low water, which enabled us to get readily into deep water at every state of the tide, gave us opportunities for practising swimming which were taken advantage of by the boys, so that our school was renowned for its excellent swimmers and carried off all the first prizes at the swimming competitions with other schools.
I was the elder of the two children of my father by about two years, and I excelled my less robust brother as much in athletic sports as he surpassed me in a knowledge of Greek and Latin. However, my progress in my intellectual studies was not conspicuously bad, only I greatly preferred perfecting my bodily frame to cultivating my mental faculties. My brother, on the other hand, though much inferior to me in muscular strength, was a diligent student and cut a very good figure at the annual examinations.
My father was a man of cultivated tastes, a good classical scholar, and a strict disciplinarian. He took care that we should be well instructed in religion, and devoted much time to making us thoroughly acquainted with the social state and political constitution of our country.
Under his tuition I acquired a great respect for all the existing institutions of Britain, and I gained a profound conviction that this country was much superior to any country of ancient or modern times in both its political and social aspects. I was thoroughly persuaded that a limited Monarchy, supported by a hereditary House of Peers, and a House of Commons elected by the free and independent votes of a virtuous people, was the perfection of forms of government. I admired the glorious union of Church and State, fraught with so much benefit to both parties, and I was fervently thankful that I had been born an Englishman.
My father's means did not allow him to send both of us to Oxford; and as my brother's superior aptitude for study plainly indicated that a university education would be more profitably bestowed on him than on me, I not unwillingly consented that he should be brought up for the Church, while I looked about for some mode of life more adapted to my capacity.
Though I cordially ceded to my brother any claim I might be thought to possess, as the elder of the two, to a university education, I envied him the possession of those natural abilities which enabled him to study for the Church, than which I could not conceive a more glorious calling. However, as nature had denied me the qualities of mind necessary to the aspirant for a place in the ecclesiastical establishment of my beloved country, it was resolved, after much careful consideration, to send me to push my fortune in one of our colonial possessions. My father considered me eminently fitted for such a career, as I was at once enterprizing and persevering, and, being blessed with a robust constitution and a splendid muscular development, he thought I should be able to rough it in the bush.
In another point of view my father considered me just the kind of person to become a colonist. I was well grounded in religion and much attached to the Church, of which he himself was a devoted member and priest. I was a sworn admirer of the institutions of my country, and there was no fear but that I would heartily co-operate with those colonists who were endeavouring to reproduce, in their adopted country, the manners, customs and forms of government of the country of their birth.
My father sincerely believed, and I shared his belief, that it should be the endeavour of all English colonists to dot the world over with little facsimiles of England, as far as the circumstances of the case would permit. But since they could not carry their beloved Sovereign along with them, yet they could show their loyalty to the throne by their devotion to its representative abroad; and they would resist, with all their might, the efforts of demagogues and free-thinkers to introduce new-fangled forms of government, under pretence of securing the greatest liberty and happiness to the greatest number. Under the careful tuition of my revered parent, I came to hate a radical almost as heartily as I abhorred an infidel.
A cousin of my own, by my mother's side, had been some years successfully settled in Australia, and he was anxious that I should join him, as his farming operations were on so large a scale that he required an energetic and well-principled young man to share his labours and his profits. This was an opening my father highly approved of and which I was eager to embrace.
It was necessary, however, that I should spend a couple of years in England, in order to learn practically the business of farming. An extensive farmer in a neighbouring county, an old schoolfellow of my father, consented to take me as a pupil and teach me his business, for a very moderate premium.
When I had completed my two years' agricultural education, my outfit was provided, and my passage taken in a sailing vessel, belonging to a firm of shipowners, one of the partners in which was an old friend of my father. Brisbane, in Queensland, was the port to which the ship was bound, that being the nearest accessible point to the scene of my future operations.
My father, mother, and brother came up with me to London to see me off, and we had a melancholy parting at Gravesend. My mother wept long and bitterly at this separation from her first-born, and, I believe, her favourite child. My brother, also, was much affected, and a pang shot through my breast on giving him a fond embrace at the thought that he was still to remain in the land I so dearly loved, and to form one of the ministers of that Church which I believed to be the purest and most scriptural of Christian communities, whilst I was doomed to exile from home and country, in order to labour hard among the unpeopled wilds of a colony situated at the other side of the globe, utterly removed from those congenial influences of an old civilisation that surrounded me in England.
My father, though outwardly calm, was, I felt assured, only able to repress his emotion by a great effort. When the ship began to weigh anchor, and it was necessary for all visitors to go ashore, he strained me to his breast, and said:—
"Farewell, my son, I know I can trust you to act up to those high principles I have always set before you. Religion and loyalty are the best foundation for a successful career in any condition, and I know my boy has both."
With these words, and with many a tender pressure of my hand, he quitted me, having first given me a volume on which he had been engaged for some time back, and the first copy of which he had that morning received from his publisher. It was entitled "Constitutional Sermons," and contained a collection of his own discourses, in which he endeavoured to show, with complete success I believe, the perfect agreement of the British Constitution with the doctrines of Christianity.
I watched the boat that conveyed my loved relations to shore with eyes dimmed with tears, and a heart almost bursting with emotion. However, the passage down the river soon gave me something else to occupy my thoughts, and I gradually became highly interested in the novelties surrounding me.
Our ship was a perfectly new vessel, built according to the design of a very ingenious gentleman, who, though not a professional shipbuilder, had, by his very original writings and researches, inspired a belief in many quarters that the ordinary modes of constructing ships were all wrong, that the system of shipbuilding he advocated was the only one based on sound principles, and that ships constructed on his plan would excel vessels of the ordinary build both in speed and in safety. The owners of the line of Australian packets my father knew, struck with the originality and plausibility of the new system, had entrusted the inventor with the building of a ship on his plan, and the vessel I was now in, appropriately named the Precursor, was the result, and this was her first voyage.
Before we started, she was an object of much curiosity, and though certain old and experienced shipbuilders shook their heads, they did not venture to speak out their objections amid the general clamour of applause that proceeded from the self-constituted critics who understood all about shipbuilding by intuition and without the drudgery of learning. The passengers shared the enthusiasm of the inventor, and were confident we should make the swiftest and pleasantest voyage on record. I was surprised to find that the passengers were so few in number, considering the general chorus of admiration the construction of the vessel had elicited. While some vessels of the old construction, which started about the same time as ourselves for the same destination, were crammed full, we had ample room for three times as many as we had on board.
I noticed, also, that the crew consisted chiefly of young and inexperienced-looking hands, mingled with some old sailors of dissipated and disreputable appearance, who did not inspire me with much confidence in their nautical knowledge, their moral character or their physical powers.
I was informed by one of my fellow-passengers that the underwriters at Lloyd's had insisted on an unusually heavy premium of insurance, but he ascribed this to the intrigues of the shipbuilders, who set afloat reports derogatory to the safety of the vessel. In fact, he said, a great deal of prejudice had been excited against her by the underhand proceedings of those interested in her failure, whereby passengers and crew had been deterred from taking passage in her. Had it not been for the noble and generous way in which the editors of influential papers had taken up the new principle of shipbuilding, of the merits of which, in their editorial omniscience, they were fully qualified to judge, it is doubtful whether the inventor would ever have had an opportunity of constructing a ship on his principles in this country. In that case, he would, no doubt, have taken his invention to some other country, and the supremacy of the sea would have passed out of the hands of England, perhaps for ever. At least so thought my informant, who was an enthusiast for the new system of shipbuilding, but who, I regret to say, accompanied us no farther than Plymouth, off which port he quitted us in a pilot-smack.
Our captain was a young man, a relative of the inventor, and an implicit believer in the new principle, which he felt convinced was to revolutionise the whole shipbuilding trade, and render voyages by sailing vessels matters of as much certainty as by steamers.
Any doubts that the lack of passengers, the scratch appearance of the crew, the high rate of insurance, and the youth of the captain, might have inspired, were rapidly dispelled when our ship bore away down the Channel with a favourable wind, under a full spread of snowy canvas.
I soon got over the strangeness of shipboard, and in a few days felt as much at home on the sea as though I had been a sailor all my life. We were favoured with the finest weather imaginable all the way to Cape Horn, which we doubled in gallant style, and then bore up in an almost northerly course, running parallel to the west coast of South America, at about one hundred miles distant from land.
Our captain, whose aim it was to make a voyage of unexampled rapidity to Queensland, thought that if he crossed to the north of the line and got into the region of the prevalent north-east trade-winds, which are so much stronger and more certain than the south-eastern trades, he might thus be enabled to reach his destination more quickly than by pursuing a more direct course.
We accordingly held to our northerly direction and every day approached nearer to the torrid zone. The change from the extreme cold of Cape Horn to the warmth of the tropics was pleasant enough at first, but, as we neared the equator, the heat became overpowering. The wind that had hitherto favoured us began to shift about from one quarter to another, and occasionally dropped completely, letting our sails hang idly from the yards.
We had been subject to these caprices of the wind for some days, when the weather became extremely sultry and a sudden fall of the barometer announced an approaching storm.
Our captain, who, to do him justice, was well up in nautical knowledge, and, though a theorist, was a careful and prudent sailor, saw reason to apprehend a storm of some violence. To provide for the worst he had the boats looked to, saw that they were ready for immediate use, and that the life-boat in especial lay free on the deck and was well supplied with oars, mast and sail, some cases of preserved meat, some bags of biscuit and kegs of water; for, though he spoke, and I believe felt, as confident of the safety of his ship as ever, he, like a prudent man, was resolved to provide against accidents, however remote they appeared to him.
We had not long to wait for the outbreak of the storm. The sky became covered with a thick pall of black cloud, and the wind came on with a roar, lashing the sea into white-crested billows, that every moment increased in size. We had been laid head to wind, with every stitch of canvas furled, and yet we were driven rapidly astern by the furious gale.
Every instant the wind increased in violence, the darkness became greater, and our condition more perilous. Suddenly the shrill voice of a boy, perched up somewhere among the shrouds, alarmed us with the cry of "Breakers astern!" Our captain ran up beside the boy, and presently descended with a face pale with emotion; but with consummate calmness he gave the necessary orders for avoiding the danger. A jib-sail was unfurled and the rudder put hard a-port. The force of the gale caused the vessel to swing suddenly round, and just as she presented her side to the full force of the wind, she turned right over and almost immediately disappeared beneath the waves. The whole thing happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that there was not an instant of time for making any preparations for the catastrophe. I was standing on the windward side of the vessel, clinging to the bulwarks, and, before I could realise what had happened, I found myself projected with considerable force into the boiling abyss of water. Now, although I was almost as much at home in the water as on land, in such a sea and under such circumstances I had no chance for my life. But I had no time to make this reflection. Without knowing how it happened, I found myself overwhelmed by the world of seething waters. I came speedily to the surface, and then the whole gravity of my position forced itself upon me. The only part of the gallant ship still visible was a portion of the hull, keel uppermost, and that was heeling over and sinking rapidly. Had I had leisure to reflect, I would have suffered myself to go down along with the ship, for what chance had I alone in such a wilderness of water? But the instinct of self-preservation was the only faculty awake at that moment, and I struck out from the engulphing whirlpool caused by the sinking ship as vigorously as I could. With a feeling of agonised despair I saw the life-boat, which had been kept ready for other emergencies, floating away broadside on at the distance of half a wave from me, and so much farther to leeward. When I rose on the crest of the wave the boat was down in the hollow, and when I sank it rose. I thought I could reach it by a few strokes, but I found that the rate at which the wind drove it was fully equal to the way I could gain by the utmost exertion. After a few minutes of vigorous swimming, I saw, to my consternation, for I now fully realised my position, that the boat was as far from me as at first. The utmost exertion I could make did not diminish my distance an atom, and I was about to abandon the attempt in despair, when I perceived close beside me the trail of a rope in the water. I seized hold of it, and found it was a loose rope hanging over the stern of the life-boat. A thrill of joy shot through me as I clung on to it with both hands, but, oh, horror I as I pulled at the rope it began to pay itself out over the end of the boat, and my heart sank at the idea that it might be a loose coil of rope, without any attachment to the boat. I well remember the feeling that came over me as I observed yard after yard of the rope slide over the edge of the life-boat. It was not fear nor sadness, but a sort of apathetic indifference that took hold of me, the reaction possibly from the exquisite joy I had experienced a moment before. I made up my mind that the rope was unattached to the boat, and I seemed to be reckoning how long it would be ere I should see the end slip over and bury itself and all my hopes with it in the depths of the sea. I had twisted the end of the rope round my right wrist, and, while watching it glide out of the boat, had left off swimming. Suddenly I felt a jerk at my wrist, and at the same moment the rope left off paying out and became taut.
My hopes at once revived. I saw that the other end was fastened to the boat, and I forthwith commenced to haul myself to the boat, hand over hand. The strain on the rope turned the boat round, so that it now presented only its end in place of its side to the wind. In this position, there was no difficulty in getting up close to it. My hands were soon on the gunwale, and the rolling wave assisted me to tumble right into the boat, at the bottom of which I lay for a few minutes, exhausted by fatigue and excitement.
But I did not lie long. Anxiety about the fate of my companions of the ship made me start up, in order to see if there were other survivors of the wreck besides myself. I scanned every wave as it rose to view with eager eyes. Some hen-coops, cases, spars, and other deck-lumber were visible, but I saw no one clinging to them, nor could I detect the head of any bold swimmer among those black and hideous waves. The time that had elapsed since the vessel went down (for it had taken me a long time to get to the boat after I had seized on the rope, as the rope was long, and, having stopped swimming while it was paying out, I was separated by its whole length from the boat) would have been sufficient to overwhelm any but a very powerful swimmer; and I knew that few of my companions could swim at all and none of them very well. Had there been any survivor of the wreck in the water at that moment, it would have been utterly impossible for me to reach him, for the wind still continued to impel my boat forward much too powerfully for me to have been able to stay its course, far less to row back to the struggling swimmer, had there been any such.
When I reflected on this, I felt almost relieved that nowhere could I espy a sign of a living being, for I knew that I should have only had to endure the agony of seeing him go down beneath the waves without the power to help him in the slightest degree.
After my fruitless search, I lay down once more exhausted and scarcely thankful that I alone should have been saved whilst all the passengers and crew had accompanied the fine vessel to the bottom of the sea.
How long I lay, worn out and stunned, sensible of nothing but my forlorn and lonely condition, while the boat was tossed up and down amid the vast solitude of the ocean, I know not. But gradually I felt that I must exert myself, if only to get a respite from the sombre thoughts that pursued me.
I perceived that the violence of the storm was sensibly abating; the wind no longer swept over the sea in the same terrific gusts, and the crests of the waves were no longer blown into white foam. I crept forward to the middle of the boat, and, by great exertions, managed to fix the short mast into its socket, and to hoist the small, sail with which it was furnished, resolved to let the wind, which had now moderated to a stiff breeze, carry me as fast as possible away from the scene of death and desolation.
Almost my first idea was to endeavour to ascertain in what direction the boat was hurrying. I found the compass stowed away among the cases and kegs at the bottom of the boat, and I ascertained that I was sailing almost due north.
I ate some food and took a good draught of water, and, feeling refreshed and invigorated, sat down in the stern, with the tiller-lines in my hands, and kept the boat well before the wind.
After the lapse of a few hours, the sea became comparatively calm, the clouds broke, the sun began to shine forth, substituting dazzling brightness for the previous gloom.
For hours I watched my buoyant craft, as it ploughed its way through the blue waters, until the sun began to sink beneath the western horizon, the wind fell completely, and the sail flapped idly against the mast.
Ere night closed in a dead calm prevailed. I took down my useless sail and lay down to repose among its folds, while the clear stars shone above me, and I gradually sank into a deep and dreamless sleep.
I did not awake until the morning rays of the sun were shining in my face. I started up and for a moment was unable to recall where I was. But suddenly the truth flashed upon me, and the awful catastrophe of the previous day rushed into my mind.
I was all alone on the wide still sea; not a breath of wind was there, not a ripple on the surface of the ocean, but only a long swell that rocked the boat lazily up and down—the remains of yesterday's storm.
As the sun rose the heat became intolerable, and I formed my sail into a sort of canopy to protect me from his scorching rays. The dreadful silence of the calm was more intolerable than the hissing and roaring of the tempest. The roar of the wind and the rush of the waters prevent one feeling absolutely solitary. The noise is a voice, though a rough one, and one cannot feel quite alone with such rude voices all around. But the silence of the calm is intolerably oppressive. I tried to dispel it by shouting, by striking the boat with one of the preserved meat tins, by whistling, by singing; but when I ceased the silence seemed to be worse than before.
I threw myself down in the stern of the boat, and for a while a feeling of apathy kept me still; but soon the thoughts of home, of my parents and friends, of the companions of my voyage, came over me, and I could remain quiet no longer.
I looked into the dark blue water and felt a longing to spring overboard; but better thoughts prevailed, and I made a firm resolve to do nothing to cut short the life which had been so wonderfully preserved.
I calculated how long my provisions would last me, and felt almost certain that before they were exhausted some ship would rescue me from my fearful situation.
Three days passed in this way. The dead calm was not constant. Now and then a light breeze would spring up, producing a slight ripple on the surface of the sea. I would then hoist my sail, and keep it up until the last breath of wind had again died away.
I took my meals at regular times, economising my store of provisions as much as was consistent with keeping up my strength, and most of the remainder of my time was spent in scanning the horizon in hopes of seeing a friendly sail.
On the morning of the fourth day I thought I discovered some sign of land far away in the north. It was but a speck, and might well be a cloud, but I was convinced that it must be land. Fortunately a gentle breeze rose, and as it continued to blow from the south, I hoisted my sail and steered straight towards the distant speck.
The breeze was so slight that I made but slow progress. However, by noon the speck had grown a little larger and had assumed a more distinct form. I felt assured it must be the tops of some lofty, though still distant, mountains, towards which I was steering, and I reckoned that, at my present rate of progress, I should be close upon them in another twenty-four hours.
Hope again took the place of despondency, but I experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling when I considered that the land before me might be one of those Pacific islands, inhabited by cannibals, who would probably give me, at my journey's end, a warmer welcome than would be agreeable. I soon dismissed this thought, when I remembered how many of these islands had been brought under the beneficent influences of Christianity and civilisation by the self-denying labours of our good missionaries.
From the position of the sun at noon I guessed that I must be close upon the equator, and indeed the heat I had been exposed to ever since the cessation of the storm, was something not to be described. With no possibility of shelter in the open boat, I should have been thoroughly roasted, ready for eating in fact, by my friends the cannibals, by the time I reached their island. The only way in which I could keep myself at all cool was to empty a can of sea water over me every now and then.
The sail, which had served to shelter me a little when there was no prospect of a breeze, was now constantly hoisted in order to catch a chance breath of air. The water all around me looked deliciously inviting, and I would have had no hesitation in springing into it, and taking a long swim in its clear depths, but that sundry ominous pointed membranes, that occasionally showed themselves above the surface, told me that I was followed by one or more gigantic white sharks, which would have been only too happy to welcome me into the water. So I thought that, on the whole, it was safer to take my chance of cannibals on the land, than to trust myself to the tender mercies of the hungry fishes that attended me so closely.
Before the sun set I was able to make out that the land I was approaching so slowly consisted of an archipelago of islands apparently of a volcanic character; as a thin column of smoke ascended from one of the peaks into the clear air and spread out into a soft cloud at a great height in the blue sky. I could see that the lower parts of the land were dark with foliage, and I longed to reach its welcome shade, in which I might obtain shelter from the broiling heat that threatened to shrivel me up in my exposed situation. When the shades of night overtook me I could not sleep, such was my anxiety to hold my frail vessel to the right course, and my dread of losing the chance of a passing breath of wind.
All night long I sat with the tiller-lines in my hands, straining my eyes into the gloom. An occasional glow from the burning crater served to cheer me and to keep my boat in the proper direction.
When at last the sun arose above the eastern horizon, I was gratified to observe that I had made some progress during the night, and I was enabled to perceive that I was gradually approaching a beautiful group of islands, with bold outlines of lofty hills and a luxuriant vegetation extending almost to their summits.
As no breath of air was stirring, I lowered my useless sail, and taking the oars in my hands, I began to row with all my might. Though a good oarsman, I could not keep up the exertion long, as the boat was large and the heat of the sun overpowering. However, with occasional spurts and long rests between, I managed to make some way, and every hour brought me perceptibly nearer to my destination. By noon I found myself so near the main island, that I could distinguish the shapes of the trees that fringed the water's edge.
I now also perceived that a reef of rocks, just peering above the water, ran round the island at some miles' distance from the shore; and as I approached this I found that it formed a complete barrier to my farther progress. I skirted it at some distance in order to find an opening through which I might gain access to the inner waters. There were at uncertain intervals on the reef small patches of higher rock on which clumps of palm trees grew, but I could discover no gap in the rocky barrier. After spending some time in this search, I resolved to give it up and try to get my boat across a part of the barrier where it seemed lowest.
I was rather astonished that there was no sign of human life on the waters in the inland sea, not a mast of a ship, nor even a boat or canoe of any description. I could not detect any buildings on the land; but the dense forest that clothed it might well conceal larger buildings than any likely to be reared by savages. The absence of shipping and sailing craft of every kind gave me an idea that the land was uninhabited.
However, I resolved to penetrate if possible into the inner sea, if necessary by dragging my boat across the barrier, supposing the rising tide should not enable me to pass over it.
Half an hour more of steady rowing brought the bow of my boat on to the reef. No sooner did the keel grate against the sunken coral than I was startled by a loud barking. Hastily turning to see whence the noise proceeded, I was astonished to observe a large seal floundering along the reef towards me. The ferocious aspect of the brute alarmed me, and I was about to shove off again to avoid its attack, when I perceived that it was tethered to the rock by a chain which was attached to a metal collar round its neck, and that in spite of its frantic efforts it could not come within some yards of my boat.
It continued to bark violently, and I had scarcely time to wonder at the strange phenomenon of a tethered seal, when a new cause of astonishment presented itself.
From the still clear water of the enclosed sea a man's head suddenly emerged. The head was surmounted by a sort of helmet, made of some shining material, and he wore a pair of spectacles which gave a very droll appearance to his dripping face.
My surprise was no way lessened when this strange head hailed me with a sonorous "Hulloh!" I replied by repeating his salutation. "Hulloh!" I said.
"Who are you, and where do you come from?" said the head.
"I am the only survivor of a dreadful shipwreck," I replied, "and I beg you to help me to get my boat across this reef, that I may come to the land yonder."
"All right, stranger," he replied, and forthwith he clambered up on the reef, and presently stood by my side. His clothing was of the scantiest, consisting only of short trousers, fastened round the waist with a broad and heavy-looking belt, and descending half way down the thigh like the bathing-drawers worn in England.
With his assistance the boat was hauled up the reef and launched on the enclosed water. He refused my offer to get into the boat beside me, but plunged again into the water, and placing himself at the stern commenced to push the boat towards the land, whilst I assisted its progress with the oars. I thought to myself, if this is a fair specimen of the inhabitants of this country they must be uncommonly fond of the water.
I observed that the water over which we now moved was as clear as crystal and of a beautiful blue tint. Looking over the boat's side, I could see far down into the depths below, which seemed to be filled with the strangest and most beautiful growths of corals and marine plants of all shapes and hues.
As we progressed, my friend at the stern was joined by several companions, who came I know not whence, but I supposed they must have been swimming about and I had not observed them; they all helped to push along the boat.
My astonishment at the strangeness of my position, pushed along in my boat by these tritons in bathing-drawers, helmets and spectacles, made me forget to use my oars, but the boat moved steadily onwards by their united efforts.
"Who, and what are you?" I exclaimed; but could get no satisfactory reply.
"Stop till you get ashore," one said; "you will then learn all about it." So I had to restrain my curiosity.
The few miles of sea were soon traversed, and my boat was pushed into a creek, the snow-white sand of which was overhung with a dense foliage of palms and other tropical trees, whose appearance was strange to me.
As soon as the boat stopped, I leaped out, right glad to touch terra firma once more. My attendants emerged from the water at the same time. They were six in number, and each, as he issued from the sea, plucked a broad palm-leaf and threw it over his shoulders. The one who had first assisted me, told me I must go along with them to the office of the Inspector.
A narrow path wound upwards from the beach through the dense forest composed of magnificent trees, many of which were laden with tempting fruit; among which I noticed plantains, oranges, pomegranates and bread-fruit. Among their branches, birds of exquisite plumage darted hither and thither, chattering to one another in discordant notes, uttering shrill cries, and now and then emitting sweet musical sounds.
Shrubs laden with flowers of resplendent colours, of every shade of scarlet, crimson, yellow, blue and white, formed a thick undergrowth, while climbing plants threw their shoots and tendrils from trunk to trunk and branch to branch. The air teemed with insect life. Butterflies of gorgeous colours and flies of all sorts and sizes danced among the branches, and hovered in countless myriads about us as we walked. In fact, their attentions were extremely annoying, and I observed that each of my companions used a broad palm-leaf by way of flapper, to ward off their attacks.
The noise made by the feathered beauties, and the hum and buzz of the winged insects, rendered it utterly impossible for me to converse with my strange attendants; so we walked on without speaking until we arrived at the mouth of a cave or grotto, excavated, whether by nature or art I could not decide, in a precipitous rock that barred our further progress.
Entering this cave, which extended a considerable way into the hill, I was struck with its agreeable coolness compared with the broiling heat of the external air.
A portly personage, clad in a loose blue cotton robe, rose from a bed of green leaves at our entrance, and I was formally presented to him by my original captor, and given to understand that he was the Inspector we were in search of.
He seated himself at a table, strewed with large books and writing materials. He demanded my name, and questioned me as to whence I came, how I was wrecked, the name of the ship, of the captain, the number of passengers, the cargo, &c., &c., and cross-examined me minutely as to the circumstances of my escape, and whether it was not possible that some of my fellow-passengers might also have been saved. He entered all the particulars in one of the large books, and when I, in return, questioned him as to the country I was now in, he said,—
"You will learn all about us and our country from the Instructor, to whom you will soon be introduced; but as you must now be hungry and tired, you shall have food and rest here till morning."
He dismissed my attendants, who speedily decamped and left me alone with the Inspector. He placed before me delicious fruits and some cooked meat of exquisite flavour and evidently most artistically prepared; but what animal it originally belonged to I was unable to say, nor did I care to ask my very laconic, not to say surly, entertainer. I fell to, and ate with great gusto. A few cocoa-nuts supplied me with a refreshing drink. I noticed that my host, after placing the food before me, retired to a distant part of the cave and did not once look at me while I was eating; in fact, he seemed rather to avoid seeing me eat. When I was completely satiated, I told him how well I had dined, to which he answered only by a sort of impatient grunt, and he conducted me to a bed of fresh leaves in a recess of the cave, and told me I might repose there as long as I chose.
I flung myself on the inviting couch, and wearied out with the exertions I had lately made and the excitement caused by all the strange events of this day of surprises, I soon fell into a profound sleep of which I stood greatly in need, as I had had but little rest since I had been so wonderfully rescued alone of all the crew and passengers of the ill-fated Precursor.