Page:Adrift in the Pacific, Sampson Low, 1889.djvu/49

Rh ships, the best thing he could do was to get back to the wreck and light a big fire on the beach. And then — when the sun went down —.

As he thought he kept his eye on the three black spots. One thing was certain; they did not move. Again he looked through the glass, and for some minutes he kept them in the field of his objective. And then he saw that they were three small islands that the schooner must have passed close by when they were hidden in the mist.

It was two o'clock. The tide began to retire, leaving the line of reefs bare at the foot of the cliff. Briant, thinking it was time to return to the wreck, prepared to descend the hill.

But once again he looked to the eastward. In the more oblique position of the sun he might see something that had hitherto escaped him. And he did not regret doing so; for beyond the border of forest he could now see a bluish line, which stretched from north to south for many miles, with its two ends lost behind the confused mass of trees.

"What is that?" he asked himself. And again he looked.

"The sea! Yes! The sea!"

And the glass almost dropped from his hands.

It was the sea to the eastward, there could be no doubt! It was not a continent on which he had been cast, but an island. An island in the immensity of the Pacific, which it would be impossible to leave!

And then all the perils that begirt him presented themselves to his mind as in a vision. His heart almost ceased to beat. But struggling against the involuntary weakness, he resolved to do his best to the last, however threatening the future might be.

A quarter of an hour afterwards he had regained the beach, and by the same way as he had come in the morning he returned to the wreck. He reached it about five o'clock, and found his comrades impatiently awaiting his return.