Page:Adrift in the Pacific, Sampson Low, 1889.djvu/61

Rh Donagan, Baxter, Cross, Wilcox, Service, Webb, Garaett, and also Moko, whose advice was always valuable, gathered together in the bow of the yacht, while the others were still asleep. In turns Briant and Donagan told their comrades all that had happened. They told them how a causeway across a stream, and the remains of an ajoupa had led them to believe that the country was inhabited. They explained how the wide sheet of water they had at first taken for the sea was nothing but a lake; how fresh traces they had come upon led them to the cave, near where the stream flowed out of the lake; how the bones of Francois Baudoin had been discovered; and how the map made by him showed that it was an island on which the schooner had been wrecked.

The story was told in full, neither Briant nor Donagan omitting the smallest detail ; and now all who looked at the map understood only too well that help could come to them but from the sea.

However, if the future presented itself in the gloomiest colours, and the boys could only place their hope in God, there was one who felt much less alarmed than the others, and that was Gordon. The young American had no relatives in New Zealand. And to his practical, methodical, organizing mind, there was nothing so very difficult in the task of founding a colony. He saw the chance that offered for the exercise of his natural gift, and he did not hesitate to keep up the spirits of his comrades by promising them a fairly good time if they would only help him.

And in the first place, as the island was of considerable size, it seemed impossible that it was not marked on the map of the Pacific near the American coast. They turned to the atlas, but no island of importance could they find outside the Archipelagoes which include the Fuegian or Magellanic Islands, and those of Desolation, Queen Adelaide, Clarence, etc., etc. If it had been in one of these Archipelagoes, and only separated from the continent by narrow channels, Baudoin would certainly