Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/180

 Throwing off the sail, Sam stood up and looked round, while an exclamation of surprise and pleasure broke from him. The contrast between the night and morning was more than usually striking. Not only had darkness vanished and the wind gone down, but there was a dead calm which had changed the sea into a sheet of undulating glass, and the sun had just risen, flooding the sky with rosy light, and tipping the summit of each swell with gleaming gold. The gentle, noiseless heaving of the long swell, so far from breaking the rest of nature, rather deepened it by suggesting the soft breathings of slumber. There were a few gulls floating each on its own image, as if asleep, and one great albatross soared slowly in the bright sky, as if acting the part of sentinel over the resting sea.

"How glorious!" exclaimed Robin, as, with flashing eyes, he gazed round the scarce perceptible horizon.

"How hard to believe," said Sam, in a low voice, "that we may have been brought here to die."

"But surely you do not think our case so desperate?" said Robin.

"I hope it is not, but it may be so."

"God forbid," responded Robin earnestly.

As he spoke his arm pressed the little bible which