Page:Adrift in the Pacific, Sampson Low, 1889.djvu/21

Rh would assuredly sweep away the companions and swamp her.

But suddenly there came a cry from Moko of "Land, Land!"

Through a rift in the mist the boy thought he had seen the outline of a coast to the eastward. Was he mistaken? Nothing is more difficult than to recognize the faint outlines of land, which are so easily confounded with those of the clouds.

"Land!" exclaimed Briant.

"Yes," replied Moko. "Land! to the eastward." And he pointed towards a part of the horizon now hidden by a mass of vapours.

"Are you sure?" asked Donagan.

"Yes!—Yes!—Certain!" said Moko. "If the mist opens again you look—there—a little to the right of the foremast—Look! look!"

The mist began to open and rise from the sea. A few moments more and the ocean reappeared for several miles in front of the yacht.

"Yes! Land! It is really land!" shouted Briant.

"And land that is very low," added Gordon, who had just caught sight of the indicated coast.

There was now no room for doubt. A land—continent, or island—lay some five or six miles ahead along a large segment of the horizon. In the direction she was going, and which the storm would not allow her to deviate from, the schooner would be driven on it in less than an hour. That she would be smashed, particularly if breakers stopped her before she reached the shore, there was every reason to fear. But the boys did not give that a thought. In this land, which had offered itself so unexpectedly to their sight, they saw, they could only see, a means of safety.

And now the wind blew with still greater strength, the schooner, carried along like a feather, was hurled towards the coast, which stood out like a line of ink on the Whitish waste of sky. In the background was a cliff, from a hundred and fifty to two hundred feet