life. The settlement was deserted!
The shock of this discovery almost deprived him of reason. For days,
that had seemed centuries, he had kept life in his jaded and lacerated
body solely by the strength of his fierce determination to reach
the settlement; and now that he had reached it, after a journey of
unparalleled horror, he found it deserted. He struck himself to see if
he was not dreaming. He refused to believe his eyesight. He shouted,
screamed, and waved his tattered garments in the air. Exhausted by these
paroxysms, he said to himself, quite calmly, that the sun beating on
his unprotected head had dazed his brain, and that in a few minutes he
should see well-remembered boats pulling towards him. Then, when no boat
came, he argued that he was mistaken in the place; the island yonder was
not Sarah Island, but some other island like it, and that in a second
or so he would be able to detect the difference. But the inexorable
mountains, so hideously familiar for six weary years, made mute
reply, and the sea, crawling at his feet, seemed to grin at him with
a thin-lipped, hungry mouth. Yet the fact of the desertion seemed so
inexplicable that he could not realize it. He felt as might have felt
that wanderer in the enchanted mountains, who, returning in the morning
to look for his companions, found them turned to stone.

At last the dreadful truth forced itself upon him; he retired a few
paces, and then, with a horrible cry of furious despair, stumbled
forward towards the edge of the little reef that fringed the shore.
Just as he was about to fling himself for the second time into the dark
water, his eyes, sweeping in a last long look around the bay, caught
sight of a strange appearance on the left horn of the sea beach. A thin,
blue streak, uprising from behind the western arm of the little inlet,
hung in the still air. It was the smoke of a fire!

The dying wretch felt inspired with new hope. God had sent him a direct
sign from Heaven. The tiny column of bluish vapour seemed to him as
glorious as the Pillar of Fire that led the Israelites. There were yet
human beings near him!--and turning his face from the hungry sea,
he tottered with the last effort of his failing strength towards the
blessed token of their presence.

CHAPTER IX. THE SEIZURE OF THE "OSPREY"

Frere's fishing expedition had been unsuccessful, and in consequence
prolonged. The obstinacy of his character appeared in the most trifling
cir