repel the savages of the sandal-wood islands, and these guns were all mounted and in their places. There were two old-fashioned sixes, and eight twelve-pound carronades. The first made smart reports when properly loaded. Our young mate now got the keys of the magazine, opened it, and brought forth three cartridges, with which he loaded three of the guns. These guns he fired, with short intervals between them, in hopes that the reports would be carried to the ears of some of the missing people, and encourage them to make every effort to return. The roar of artillery sounded strangely enough in the midst of that vast solitude; and Bob Betts, who had often been in action, declared that he was much affected by it, As no immediate result was expected from the firing of these guns, Mark had no sooner discharged them, than he joined Betts, who by this time had everything ready, and prepared to quit the ship. Before he did this, however, he made an anxious and careful survey of the weather it being all-important to be certain no change in this respect was likely to occur in his absence. All the omens were favourable, and Bob reporting for the third time that everything was ready, the young man went over the side, and descended, with a reluctance he could not conceal, into the boat. Certainly, it was no trifling matter for men in the situation of our two mariners, to leave their vessel all alone, to be absent for a large portion of the day. It was to be done, however; though it was done reluctantly, and not without many misgivings, in spite of the favourable signs in the atmosphere.
When Mark had taken his seat in the dingui, Bob let go his hold of the ship, and set the sail. The breeze was light, and fair to go, though it was by no means so certain how it would serve them on the return. Previously to quitting the ship, Mark had taken a good look at the breakers to leeward, in order to have some general notion of the course best to steer, and he commenced his little voyage, but entirely without a plan for his own government. The breakers were quite as numerous to leeward as to windward, but the fact of there being so many of them made smooth water between them. A boat, or a ship, that was once fairly a league or so within the broken lines of rocks, was like a vessel embayed, the rollers of the open ocean expending their force on the outer reefs, and coming in much reduced in size and power. Still the uneasy ocean, even in its state of rest, is formidable at the points where its waters meet with rocks, or sands and the breakers that did exist, even as much embayed as was the dingui, were serious matters for so small a boat to encounter. It was necessary, consequently, to steer clear of them, lest they should capsize, or fill, this, the only craft of the sort that now belonged to the vessel, the loss of which would be a most serious matter indeed.
The dingui slided away from the ship with a very easy movement. There was just about as much wind as so small a craft needed, and Bob soon began to sound, Mark preferring to steer. It was, however, by no means easy to sound in so low a boat, while in such swift motion; and Bob was compelled to give it up. As they should be obliged to return with the oars, Mark observed that then he would feel his way back to the ship. Nevertheless, the few casts of the lead that did succeed, satisfied our mariners that there was much more than water enough for the Rancocus, between the reefs. On them, doubtless it would turn out to be different.
Mark met with more difficulty than he had anticipated in keeping the dingui out of the breakers. So very smooth was the sort of bay he was in—a bay by means of the reefs to windward, though no rock in that direction rose above the surface of the sea—so very smooth, then, was the sort of bay he was in, that the water did not break, in many places, except at long intervals; and then only when a roller heavier than common found its way in from the outer ocean. As a consequence, the breakers that did suddenly show themselves from a cause like this, were the heaviest of all, and the little dingui would have fared badly had it been caught on a reef, at the precise moment when such a sea tumbled over in foam. This accident was very near occurring once or twice, but it was escaped, more by providential interference than by any care or skill in the adventurers.
It is very easy to imagine the intense interest with which our two mariners drew near to the visible reef. Their observations from the cross-trees of the ship, had told them this was all the land anywhere very near them, and if they did not find their lost shipmates here, they ought not to expect to find them at all. Then this reef, or island, was of vast importance in other points of view. It might become their future home; perhaps for years, possibly for life. The appearances of the sunken reefs, over and among which he had just passed, had greatly shaken Mark’s hope of ever getting the ship from among them, and he even doubted the possibility of bringing her down, before the wind, to the place where he was then going. All these considerations, which began to press more and more painfully on his mind, each foot as he advanced, served to increase the intensity of the interest with which he noted every appearance on, or about, the reef, or island, that he was now approaching. Bob had less feeling on the subject. He had less imagination, and foresaw consequences and effects less vividly than his officer, and was more accustomed to the vicissitudes of a seaman’s life. Then he had left no virgin bride at home, to look for his return; and had moreover made up his mind that it was the will of Providence that he and Mark were to ‘Robinson Crusoe it’ awhile, on ‘that bit of a reef.’ Whether they should ever be rescued from so desolate a place, was a point on which he had not yet begun to ponder.
The appearances were anything but encouraging, as the dingui drew nearer and nearer to the naked part of the reef. The opinions formed of this place, by the examination made from the cross-trees, turned out to be tolerably accurate, in several particulars. It was just about a mile in length, while its breadth varied from half a mile to less than an eighth of a mile. On its shores, the rock along most of the reef rose but a very few feet above the surface of the water, though at its eastern, or the weather extremity, it might have been of more than twice the usual height; its length lay nearly east and west. In the centre of this island, however, there was a singular formation of the rock, which appeared to rise to an elevation of something like sixty or eighty feet, making a sort of a regular circular mound of that height, which occupied no small part of the widest portion of the island. Nothing like tree, shrub, or grass, was visible, as the boat drew near enough to render such things apparent. Of aquatic birds there were a good many: though even they did not appear in the numbers that are sometimes seen in the vicinity of uninhabited islands. About certain large naked rocks, at no great distance however from the principal reef, they were hovering in thousands.
At length the little dingui glided in quite near to the island. Mark was at first surprised to find so little surf beating against even its weather side, but this was accounted for by the great number of the reefs that lay for miles without it; and, particularly, by the fact that one line of rock stretched directly across this weather end, distant from it only two cables’ lengths, forming a pretty little sheet of perfectly smooth water between it and the island. Of course, to do this, the line of reef just mentioned must come very near the surface; as in fact was the case, the rock rising so high as to be two or three feet out of water on the ebb, though usually submerged on the flood. The boat was obliged to pass round one end of this last-named reef, where there was deep water, and then to haul its wind a little in order to reach the shore.
It would be difficult to describe the sensations with which Mark first landed. In approaching the place, both he and Bob had strained their eyes in the hope of seeing some proof that their shipmates had been there; but no discovery rewarded their search. Nothing was seen, on or about the island, to furnish the smallest evidence that either of the boats had touched it. Mark found that he was treading on naked rock when he had landed, though the surface was tolerably smooth. The rock itself was of a sort to which he was unaccustomed; and he began to suspect, what in truth turned out on further investigation to be the fact, that instead of being on a reef of coral, he was on one of purely volcanic origin. The utter nakedness of the rock both surprised and grieved him. On the reefs, in every direction, considerable quantities of sea-weed had lodged, temporarily at least; but none of it appeared to have found its way to this particular place. Nakedness and dreariness were the two words which best described the island; the only interruption to its solitude and desolation being occasioned by the birds, which now came screaming and flying above the heads of the intruders, showing both by their boldness and their cries, that they were totally unacquainted with men.
The mound, in the centre of the reef, was an object too conspicuous to escape attention, and our adventurers approached it at once, with the expectation of getting a better look-out from its summit, than that they had on the lower level of the surface of the