WHICH LEADS GODFREY TO BITTER REFLECTIONS ON THE MANIA¹ FOR TRAVELLING. Three long hours had still to pass before the sun reappeared above the horizon. These were such hours that they might rather be called centuries.
 
The trial was a rough one to begin with, but, we repeat, Godfrey had not come out for a simple promenade². He himself put it very well when he said he had left behind him quite a lifetime of happiness and repose³, which he would never find again in his search for adventures. He tried his utmost therefore to rise to the situation.
 
He was, temporarily, under shelter. The sea after all could not drive him off the rock which lay anchored alone amid the spray of the surf. Was there any fear of the incoming tide soon reaching him? No, for on reflection he concluded that the wreck⁴ had taken place at the highest tide of the new moon.
 
But was the rock isolated⁵? Did it command a line of[Pg 78] breakers scattered⁶ on this portion of the sea? What was this coast which Captain Turcott had thought he saw in the darkness? To which continent did it belong? It was only too certain that the Dream had been driven out of her route during the storm of the preceding days. The position of the ship could not have been exactly fixed⁷. How could there be a doubt of this when the captain had two hours before affirmed that his charts bore no indication of breakers in these parts! He had even done better and had gone himself to reconnoitre these imaginary reefs which his look-outs had reported they had seen in the east.
 
It nevertheless had been only too true, and Captain Turcott's reconnaissance would have certainly prevented the catastrophe⁸ if it had only been pushed far enough. But what was the good of returning to the past?
 
The important question in face of what had happened—a question of life or death—was for Godfrey to know if he was near to some land. In what part of the Pacific there would be time later on to determine. Before everything he must think as soon as the day came of how to leave the rock, which in its biggest part could not measure more that twenty yards square. But people do not leave one place except to go to another. And if this other did not exist, if the captain had been deceived in the fog, if around[Pg 79] the breakers there stretched a boundless⁹ sea, if at the extreme point of view the sky and the water seemed to meet all round the horizon?
 
The thoughts of the young man were thus concentrated on this point. All his powers of vision did he employ to discover through the black night if any confused mass, any heap of rocks or cliffs, would reveal the neighbourhood of land to the eastward¹⁰ of the reef.
 
Godfrey saw nothing. Not a smell of earth reached his nose, not a sensation of light reached his eyes, not a sound reached his ears. Not a bird traversed the darkness. It seemed that around him there was nothing but a vast desert of water.
 
Godfrey did not hide from himself that the chances were a thousand to one that he was lost. He no longer thought of making the tour of the world, but of facing death, and calmly and bravely his thoughts rose to that Providence¹¹ which can do all things for the feeblest of its creatures, though the creatures can do nothing of themselves. And so Godfrey had to wait for the day to resign himself to his fate, if safety was impossible; and, on the contrary, to try everything, if there was any chance of life.
 
Calmed by the very gravity of his reflections, Godfrey had seated himself on the rock. He had stripped off some of his clothes which had been saturated¹² by the [Pg 80]sea-water, his woollen waistcoat and his heavy boots, so as to be ready to jump into the sea if necessary.
 
However, was it possible that no one had survived the wreck? What! not one of the men of the Dream carried to shore? Had they all been sucked in by the terrible whirlpool which the ship had drawn¹³ round herself as she sank? The last to whom Godfrey had spoken was Captain Turcott, resolved not to quit his ship while one of his sailors was still there! It was the captain himself who had hurled¹⁵ him into the sea at the moment the Dream was disappearing.
 
But the others, the unfortunate Tartlet¹⁶, and the unhappy Chinese, surprised without doubt, and swallowed up, the one in the poop, the other in the depths of the hold, what had become of them? Of all those on board the Dream, was he the only one saved? And had the steam launch remained at the stern of the steamer? Could not a few passengers or sailors have saved themselves therein, and found time to flee from the wreck? But was it not rather to be feared that the launch had been dragged down by the ship under several fathoms¹⁷ of water?
 
Godfrey then said to himself, that if in this dark night he could not see, he could at least make himself heard. There was nothing to prevent his shouting and hailing in the deep silence. Perhaps the voice of one of his companions would respond to his.
 
[Pg 81]
 
Over and over again then did he call, giving forth¹⁸ a prolonged shout which should have been heard for a considerable distance round. Not a cry answered to his.
 
He began again, many times, turning successively to every point of the horizon.
 
Absolute silence.
 
"Alone! alone!" he murmured.
 
Not only had no cry answered to his, but no echo had sent him back the sound of his own voice. Had he been near a cliff, not far from a group of rocks, such as generally border the shore, it was certain that his shouts, repelled¹⁹ by the obstacles, would have returned to him. Either eastwards²⁰ of the reef, therefore, stretched a low-lying shore ill-adapted for the production of an echo, or there was no land in his vicinity, the bed of breakers on which he had found refuge was isolated.
 
Three hours were passed in these anxieties. Godfrey, quite chilled, walked about the top of the rock, trying to battle with the cold. At last a few pale beams of light tinged²¹ the clouds in the zenith. It was the reflection of the first colouring of the horizon.
 
Godfrey turned to this side—the only one towards which there could be land—to see if any cliff outlined itself in the shadow. With its early rays the rising sun might disclose its features more distinctly.
 
[Pg 82]
 
But nothing appeared through the misty²² dawn. A light fog was rising over the sea, which did not even admit of his discovering the extent of the breakers.
 
 
 
He had, therefore, to satisfy himself with illusions. If Godfrey were really cast on an isolated rock in the Pacific, it was death to him after a brief delay, death by hunger, by thirst, or if necessary, death at the bottom of the sea as a last resource!
 
However, he kept constantly looking, and it seemed as though the intensity²³ of his gaze increased enormously, for all his will was concentrated therein.
 
At length the morning mist began to fade away. Godfrey saw the rocks which formed the reef successively defined in relief on the sea, like a troop of marine²⁴ monsters. It was a long and irregular assemblage of dark boulders²⁵, strangely worn, of all sizes and forms, whose direction was almost west and east. The enormous block on the top of which Godfrey found himself emerged from the sea on the western edge of the bank scarcely thirty fathoms from the spot where the Dream had gone down. The sea hereabouts appeared to be very deep, for of the steamer nothing was to be seen, not even the ends of her masts. Perhaps by some under-current she had been drawn away from the reefs.
 
A glance was enough for Godfrey to take in this state[Pg 83] of affairs. There was no safety on that side. All his attention was directed towards the other side of the breakers, which the lifting fog was gradually disclosing. The sea, now that the tide had retired²⁶, allowed the rocks to stand out very distinctly. They could be seen to lengthen²⁷ as there humid bases widened. Here were vast intervals²⁹ of water, there a few shallow pools. If they joined on to any coast, it would not be difficult to reach it.
 
Up to the present, however, there was no sign of any shore. Nothing yet indicated the proximity³⁰ of dry land, even in this direction.
 
The fog continued to lift, and the field of view persistently³¹ watched by Godfrey continued to grow. Its wreaths had now rolled off for about half a mile or so. Already a few sandy flats appeared among the rocks, carpeted with their slimy sea-weed.
 
Did not this sand indicate more or less the presence of a beach, and if the beach existed, could there be a doubt but what it belonged to the coast of a more important land? At length a long profile of low hills, buttressed³² with huge granitic³³ rocks, became clearly outlined and seemed to shut in the horizon on the east. The sun had drunk up all the morning vapours, and his disc broke forth in all its glory.
 
"Land! land!" exclaimed Godfrey.
 
[Pg 84]
 
And he stretched his hands towards the shore-line, as he knelt on the reef and offered his thanks to Heaven.
 
It was really land. The breakers only formed a projecting ridge³⁴, something like the southern cape³⁵ of a............