"The sight and sounds that met him were such as he had never
before encountered."
A fresh westerly breeze was blowing, filling the vessel's few sails. The sun was rising in the east, over a grey-blue sea, and between it and the brig, scarcely, as it seemed, a mile away, lay a group of jagged, rocky islands, whose tallest point was a green-topped mountain, shining bright in the early sunlight like an emerald set in ebony. Above the islands there whirled in ceaseless movement, even as specks in a sunbeam, thousands and thousands of clamorous sea-birds. All around the ship, and as far as the boy's amazed sight could reach, the sea was dotted with swimming puffins and kittiwakes, gannets and fulmars. A green-backed shag was preening its feathers on the extremity of the Aurora's bowsprit; a fearless eider-duck strutted across the deck; along the rail a school of puffins sat, like charity children in their black tippets and white bibs.
But Ben Clews thought less of the sea-birds and their noisy voices than of the one great fact that land was near. He hurried below.
"Land, ho!" he cried, and again, "Land ho!"
"Where away?" called the quartermaster, in a feeble voice from his hammock.
"Right under our bows," answered Ben. "An island—three islands I counted, and we're drifting on to them, hand over hand!"
"Then if that be so, 'tis no place for you down here, my hearty," declared the quartermaster. "Don't think of me, but take your trick at the helm and look arter the ship; for you're cap'n, and crew as well, till I can move, God mend me! Our fate's in your hands for good or bad, and you may lay to that."
"Ay, ay," returned Ben; "but there aren't no hurry just yet a bit, quartermaster. There's time and to spare for me to see you snug. 'Tarn't as if we was bowling along under full sail. Why, we aren't making above a knot an hour at best, and the nearest land's a good mile off yet."
The boy lost no time, however, in making his companion comfortable. Placing a prescribed dose of medicine, a dipper of water, and a softened biscuit within the quartermaster's easy reach, he returned to the deck and took up his post at the helm, heading the brig towards the lee side of the largest island. The rate at which the Aurora was drifting was less than he had calculated, and her distance from the land was greater. Yet slow though her progress was, the islands became more and more distinct with every half-hour. At first it had seemed that there were but three separate islands—a high, isolated rock, whose splintered outline with its many spires and pinnacles gave it the appearance of a great Gothic cathedral rising out of the blue sea on the larboard bow; to the southward, a smaller islet with a rounded, grassy top; and between these two sentinels, the long stretch of the main island with its dark, precipitous sides ascending to verdant slopes. But as the brig drew nearer still, many detached stacks and smaller rocks appeared, the frowning cliffs revealed their yawning caves and caverns, and thousands of tiny specks, that at first had looked like white pebbles in the rock, resolved themselves into roosting sea-birds.
Ben's alert eyes sought for an anchorage, and soon, near the western headland of the largest island, he caught a glimpse of sandy beach, and the gleaming white ribbon of a watercourse. The beach sloped down to a channel of calm sea that was sheltered behind the hill of a protecting island. The calm bay seemed to offer a likely refuge, and towards it Ben steered the brig. Another hour's slow sailing brought the little vessel into the safety of this roadstead, where she lost her headway and rode for the time secure on the swell of the clear green water.