"Is there going to be any wind to-night, captain?" said Sir John as they
went on deck. For answer the captain pointed away to the west, and Jack
saw here and there dark patches of rippled water, but the sails that
were left still hung motionless from the yards.
"In half-an-hour we shall be bowling along, Mr Jack," said the mate;
"and if the wind holds, before morning we shall be lying off the land."
"Then I think I shall sit up," said the lad eagerly, for his brain was
buzzing with expectation, and as full of exaggerated imaginations as it
could possibly be.
But with the nightfall, in spite of the inspiriting, cooling breeze
which sent them, as the mate had it, "bowling along," there was the
familiar sensation of fatigue, and at the usual time, after a long look
out into the darkness, Jack went to his cot, to dream that the island
was getting farther and farther off, and woke up at last with the
sensation that he had only just lain down.
For a few minutes he was too sleepy and confused to think, but all at
once the recollection of what he expected to see came to him, and he
leaped out of his berth and ran to the cabin window, but from thence he
could only see the long level plain of water.
Hurriedly dressing himself, he ran on deck, to see that the dawn was
only just appearing in the east, and as they lay to, rocking gently,
with the sails flapping, there rose up before him, dim and dark, one
vast pyramid which ran up into the heavy clouds, and filled him with a
strange sensation of awe, the greater that there was a heavy booming
sound as of thunder right and left and close at hand.
He grasped the fact directly after that it was not the low muttering of
thunder which he heard, but the booming of the heavy billows which
curved over about a couple of miles away and broke upon a reef which
extended to right and left as far as the dim light would let him see.
Then came a sense of disappointment which was almost painful. Had they
sailed by without stopping at any of the lovely islands they had
encountered, to come to this awfully gloomy-looking spot in the ocean?
The captain must be half mad to speak so highly in its favour, and for a
few moments the boy felt disposed to return to his berth and try to
forget his disappointment in sleep.
He took a few steps, and suddenly came across Edward.
"That you, Mr Jack, sir?" said the man.
"Can't you see it is?" replied the lad shortly.
"Yes, sir, and sorry for you I am."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, sir, about the island. They've been a-cracking it up to us, and
making believe as it was the loveliest place as ever was, and now we've
got to it, why it's all gammon."
"Then you've seen it, Ned?"
"Seen it, sir? I wish I hadn't. It's a trick they've played on us
because we're what they call longshore folk. Makes me long for the
shore, I can tell you. A jolly shame, sir."
"It does look dreary, Ned."
"Dreary aren't the word for it, but you can't gammon me. I know what it
is; I've read about 'em. It's one of them out-of-the-way stony places
where they used to send convicks to. `Rubbish may be shot here' spots.
And a lot of the rubbish used to be shot there if they tried to escape.
Oh, it is a dismal horror place. Give me the miserables as soon as I
saw it, after spoiling my night's rest for fear I shouldn't wake up at
daylight to see what it was like. I've seen it though, and I don't want
any more, thankye. Don't want me, I suppose, sir?"
"No, Ned. I'm going back to bed."
"Are you, sir? Well, that's a good idea, and I don't see why I
shouldn't do the same."
"Let's have another look at the place first."
"No thankye, sir. If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not. Once
was quite enough. Of course, if you say I am to look, sir, there I am."
"Oh no, I don't want you. Go back to bed. It's a miserable place, Ned,
but I dare say there will be some good fishing."
"Take a lot of good fishing, sir, and they'd have to be very fresh, to
make it worth staying for. Good-night, sir."
"Good-morning, Ned," said Jack with a faint smile, and the man went
below, while, feeling chilly and depressed, and as if it would be wiser
to follow the fellow's example, he walked moodily forward, gazing over
the side in the direction of the island, and noticing now that there was
a low line of thick mist lying just over where the billows broke in foam
and produced the deep thunderous roar.
Cold, chilling, and repellent as it was, Jack could not repress a
shiver, and the feeling of dislike to the voyage, which had been rapidly
dying out in the new interests he felt, came back with renewed force.
"Why did we come?" he muttered.
As his eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom, he saw that the low
clouds seemed to be in bands above each other, increasing the strangely
forbidding aspect.
Just then there was a light step on the deck, and the mate came up.
"Morning," he said. "Here we are, you see."
"See? Yes; but what a place!"
"Eh?" cried the mate in surprise; "what, don't you like the look of it?"
"No; it is horrible. Just a black and grey mountain rising out of the
sea. Are we at anchor?"
"No; only lying-to, waiting for the full light, so as to find the
opening through the reef. There is no anchorage out here; I dare say
the lead would go down a mile."
"What, so close to the shore?"
"Oh yes. These volcanic mountains rise up suddenly--steeply, I mean,
from very great depths, and then the coral insects begin building upon
them, and form regular breakwaters of solid stone all round, and these
coral reefs rise just to the surface, and keep the waves from washing
the sides of the volcano away."
"What a pity!" said Jack mockingly. "I don't see any good in preserving
a great black-looking heap like that."
"Don't you?" said the mate, smiling, and looking back up at the gloomy
eminence.
"No, I don't," replied Jack, with a touch of early morning ill-humour in
his tones. "But isn't that nonsense? The sea could not wash away an
island like that."
"What! Why, give it time and it will wash away a continent. But an
island like this would be nothing to it without the coral insects
stopped it. Some volcanoes rise in these seas and never get much above
the surface--the waves wash them away as fast as they form. You see
they are only made up of loose cinders and ashes which fall over outside
as they are thrown up. Others are more solid if liquid lava boils over
the edge of the crater and runs down. This gradually hardens into
massive rock, and resists the beating of the sea till the coral insects
have done their work, building up to the surface of the sea, and then
going on at the sides."
"I suppose you are right," said Jack with a yawn, "but the sooner we get
away from this ugly place the better."
"Think so? Well, wait and see it by daylight first. Look!"
He pointed to where, nearly a mile above them, a bright golden spot had
appeared.
"Why, the volcano's burning," cried Jack excitedly. "Look! It's
red-hot, and gradually increasing. There's going to be an eruption.
How grand! But shall we be safe here?"
"Quite," said the mate, smiling, and he stood watching his companion's
face, and its changes in the glowing light of the magnificent spectacle,
as the golden red-hot aspect of the mountain top rapidly increased,
displaying every seam, ravine, and buttress, that seemed to be of
burning metal, fiery spot after fiery spot, that the minute before was
of a deep violet black. And this went on, with the fire appearing to
sink gradually down till the whole of the mountain top was one grand
blaze of glory, which went on apparently sinking behind a belt of
clouds, till from being of dark and gloomy grey they began to glow and
become of a wonderful translucency.
"Oh!" panted the lad, "I never saw anything so grand as that. Look how
the awful fire is reflected in the sky all round there."
"Yes, it's brightening it well up," said the mate, smiling; and then the
boy looked in his face, and the truth came to him like a flash from the
great orb to enlighten his understanding.
"Why, you're laughing at me," he cried. "How stupid! I thought the
mountain was burning. You should have told me. How was I to--Yes, I
ought to have known that mountain tops first caught the light. Oh, I
wish I were not so ignorant."
"You are not the first who has been deceived," said the mate quietly.
"Well, the mountain does not look so gloomy now, does it?"
"Glorious! Up there it is grand. I wish we were on the top."
"All in good time. But you know how quickly the full day comes here
near the equator. Keep looking."
Jack wanted no telling, and for the next few minutes, with a curious
sense of awe, wonder, and delight, he stood watching the line of light
descending and making the beauties of the volcanic island start out of
the gloom. The bands of cloud which hung round the sharp slope became
roseate, golden, orange, and purple, and soon after the lad was gazing
below the barren, glowing rocks at patches of golden green, then at the
beginning of billows and deep valleys running down, the former of
wonderful shades of green, the latter of deep dark velvety purple,
across which silvery films of vapour were floating.
And still the light came down, casting wonderful shadows, setting
towering pyramidical trees blazing as it were; and then all at once the
boy could have believed that he was gazing where there was a gash of
liquid fire pouring down into a dark valley, flashing and coruscating
till it disappeared.
And still lower and lower, with wonderful rapidity now, as the great
glowing disk was seen to rise above the edge of the sea, till the whole
island was ablaze in the morning sunshine, and the gloomy, forbidding
mass was one glorious picture of tropic beauty. Forests grouped
themselves about the lower mountain slopes, lovely park-like stretches
could be seen lower still, and beneath lower groves of palm-like trees a
band of golden sand. Nearer still, thin lines of cocoa palms edging
what appeared to be a lake of the purest blue, edged in turn with a
sparkling line of foam, where the billows seemed to be eternally
fretting to get over the surrounding reef and plunge themselves into the
placid, perfectly calm lagoon.
Lastly there was the dark sea, now lit up into a gleaming plain of
gently heaving waves; all being shot as it were with purple, where again
patches of rippled damascened silver flashed in the opening of a new
day.
"It is too beautiful," muttered the boy to himself. "It seems almost as
if it hurt and made one sad. Oh," he said aloud, "and I never called
him up to see."
"Eh, what's that?" said Sir John. "Think we were sleeping through all
this? Oh no! What a glorious sunrise, my boy."
"Glorious," cried the doctor, grasping the boy's arm. "I didn't think
Nature could be so grand. Here, I don't feel as if I could wait for
breakfast. Oh, Jack, my lad, what times we're going to have out there."
"Well, gentlemen," said the captain, coming up with his face shining in
the morning light, "will this do for you? What do you say to my island
now?"
"Thank you," said Sir John, offering his hand. "I don't think we shall
want to go any farther, Bradleigh. There will be enough here to last us
for life."
"Right," cried the doctor, rubbing his hands. "Only to think of our
pottering away our existence at home when there were places like this to
see. I say, you know, Nature isn't fair. The idea of such grand,
clever chaps as we are--or think we are--having to put up with our
gloomy, foggy island, and a set of naked savages having such a home as
that. I say it's quite unnatural."
"I don't suppose they appreciate the beauties of the place," said Sir
John.
"Will it do?" cried the doctor. "I'm philosopher enough to say that
this is just the sort of place where a man can be happy. You don't get
me away from here, I can tell you. I mean to stay."
"For the present, at all events," said Sir John. "I question though
whether Captain Bradleigh here will want to stop very long."
"Just as long as you like, gentlemen," said the captain. "I can make
myself contented anywhere. That is," he added with a laugh, "if I can
find good safe anchorage for the vessel I command. Well then, if you
think this place will do for a stay, the first thing to be done is to
find the way through the reef into the lagoon. There's an opening
somewhere near here."
Just about that time Jack cast his eyes aft and saw that Edward was
standing by the cabin hatch with one of Sir John's serge jackets in his
left and a clothes-brush in his right hand, for though the clothes on
ship-board seemed as if they could not by any possibility gather dust--
they did get some flue in the corners of the pockets--Edward gave them
all a thorough-going turn every morning before he rubbed over the shoes
with paste, the blacking bottle remaining unopened and the brushes
unused.
Jack went quickly up to him, and Edward began rubbing his head with the
back of the clothes-brush; but before the lad could speak the man began.
"Beg pardon, sir," he said, "but you didn't happen to see me on deck in
the middle of the night, did you?"
"No, Ned," said Jack, staring.
"Of course you didn't, sir," said the man, speaking as if relieved.
"Made me feel as if my head was getting a bit soft."
"No wonder, if you keep on tapping it with the clothes-brush."
"Oh, that won't hurt it, sir, my head's hard as wood. I'm a bit late
this morning--over-slept myself. Had the rummiest dream I ever knowed
of."
"What did you dream?"
"Dreamt as I come up in the middle of the night, just when it was
thinking about getting to morning, and we'd sailed to about the
horridest place as ever was, and then I looked round and saw you like a
black shadow going about the deck without making a sound."
"I had no shoes on," said Jack.
"Then it wasn't a dream, and it was only that the place looked so dismal
drear in the dusk."
"Of course it was, Ned."
The man gave his head a rap with the clothes-brush. "Then that's a
lesson for a man never to be in too much of a hurry. 'Pon my word, Mr
Jack, sir, when I came just now and had a look, I felt as if I must have
been dreaming, for as soon as I went below I lay down for a snooze, and
went off like a top."
"The light has made a wonderful change, Ned," said Jack. "Well, what do
you think of it now?"
"It's beyond thinking, sir, it's wonderful. We've seen some tidy places
as we come along, but this beats everything I ever saw. Seems to me
that we'd better stop here altogether. They say `there's no place like
home,' but I say there's no place like this."
"It really is beautiful, Ned. You should have stopped on deck and seen
the wonderful transformation as the sun rose."
"Couldn't have been anything like coming upon it sudden, sir, after
going below feeling that you'd been cheated. How I should like to send
for my poor old mother to see it. But I dunno: she wouldn't come.
She's got an idee that Walworth is about the loveliest place in the
world. But it ain't, Mr Jack, you may believe me, it really ain't, not
even when the sun shines; while when it don't, and it happens to be a
bit muddy, or it rains, or there's a fog, it's--well, I don't think
there's anything short of a photo to show what it really is like, and
one of them wouldn't do it credit. But this isn't Walworth, sir, and
the next thing I want to do is to go ashore and see what the place is
like."
"All in good time, Ned. I suppose we shall soon begin collecting now."
"Any time you like, Mr Jack, sir, and please remember that your
obedient servant to command, Edward Sims, is aboard, and whether it's
sticking pins through flies and beetles like Sir John does, or shooting
and skinning birds and beasts like the doctor, I want to be in it. My
word, there ought to be some fine things here."
"There's no doubt about it."
"Then if you'll remember me, sir, as the song says, there isn't anything
I won't do, even to being your donkey for you to ride when you're tired,
and," added the man with a smile full of triumph, as if defying any one
to surpass his offer, "you can't say fairer than that."
"I'll try for you to come, Ned," he replied.
"Do, sir, if it's only to carry the vittles. Thankye, sir, all the
same."