“Got you there, my friend,” I said.
Bickley murmured something about force of habit, and looked smaller than I had ever seen him do before.
Somehow we forced that door open; it was not easy because it had jammed. Within the cabin, hanging on either side of the bath towel which had stood the strain nobly, something like a damp garment over a linen line, was Bastin most of whose bunk seemed to have disappeared. Yes—Bastin, pale and dishevelled and looking shrunk, with his hair tousled and his beard apparently growing all ways, but still Bastin alive, if very weak.
Bickley ran at him and made a cursory examination with his fingers.
“Nothing broken,” he said triumphantly. “He’s all right.”
“If you had hung over a towel for many hours in most violent weather you would not say that,” groaned Bastin. “My inside is a pulp. But perhaps you would be kind enough to untie me.”
“Bosh!” said Bickley as he obeyed. “All you want is something to eat. Meanwhile, drink this,” and he handed him the remains of the whisky.
Bastin swallowed it every drop, murmuring something about taking a little wine for his stomach’s sake, “one of the Pauline injunctions, you know,” after which he was much more cheerful. Then we hunted about and found some more of the biscuits and other food with which we filled ourselves after a fashion.
“I wonder what has happened,” said Bastin. “I suppose that, thanks to the skill of the captain, we have after all reached the haven where we would be.”
Here he stopped, rubbed his eyes and looked towards the saloon door which, as I have said, had been wrenched off its hinges, but appeared to have opened wider than when I observed it last. Also Tommy, who was recovering his spirits, uttered a series of low growls.
“It is a most curious thing,” he went on, “and I suppose I must be suffering from hallucinations, but I could swear that just now I saw looking through that door the same improper young woman clothed in a few flowers and nothing else, whose photograph in that abominable and libellous book was indirectly the cause of our tempestuous voyage.”
“Indeed!” replied Bickley. “Well, so long as she has not got on the broken-down stays and the Salvation Army bonnet without a crown, which you may remember she wore after she had fallen into the hands of your fraternity, I am sure I do not mind. In fact I should be delighted to see anything so pleasant.”
At this moment a distinct sound of female tittering arose from beyond the door. Tommy barked and Bickley stepped towards it, but I called to him.
“Look out! Where there are women there are sure to be men. Let us be ready against accidents.”
So we armed ourselves with pistols, that is Bickley and I did, Bastin being fortified solely with a Bible.
Then we advanced, a remarkable and dilapidated trio, and dragged the door wide. Instantly there was a scurry and we caught sight of women’s forms wearing only flowers, and but few of these, running over white sand towards groups of men armed with odd-looking clubs, some of which were fashioned to the shapes of swords and spears. To make an impression I fired two shots with my revolver into the air, whereupon both men and women fled into groves of trees and vanished.
“They don’t seem to be accustomed to white people,” said Bickley. “Is it possible that we have found a shore upon which no missionary has set a foot?”
“I hope so,” said Bastin, “seeing that unworthy as I am, then the opportunities for me would be very great.”
We stood still and looked about us. This was what we saw. All the after part of the ship from forward of the bridge had vanished utterly; there was not a trace of it; she had as it were been cut in two. More, we were some considerable distance from the sea which was still raging over a quarter of a mile away where great white combers struck upon a reef and spouted into the air. Behind us was a cliff, apparently of rock but covered with earth and vegetation, and against this cliff, in which the prow of the ship was buried, she, or what remained of her, had come to anchor for the last time.
“You see what has happened,” I said. “A great tidal wave has carried us up here and retreated.”
“That’s it,” exclaimed Bickley. “Look at the debris,” and he pointed to torn-up palms, bushes and seaweed piled into heaps which still ran salt water; also to a number of dead fish that lay about among them, adding, “Well, we are saved anyhow.”
“And yet there are people like you who say that there is no Providence!” ejaculated Bastin.
“I wonder what the views of Captain Astley and the crew are, or rather were, upon that matter,” interrupted Bickley.
“I don’t know,” answered Bastin, looking about him vaguely. “It is true that I can’t see any of them, but if they are drowned no doubt it is because their period of usefulness in this world had ended.”
“Let’s get down and look about us,” I remarked, being anxious to avoid further argument.
So we scrambled from the remnant of the ship, like Noah descending out of the ark, as Bastin said, on to the beach beneath, where Tommy rushed to and fro, gambolling for joy. Here we discovered a path which ran diagonally up the side of a cliff which was nowhere more than fifty or sixty feet in height, and possibly had once formed the shore of this land, or perhaps that of a lake. Up this path we went, following the tracks of many human feet, and reaching the crest of the cliff, looked about us, basking as we did
