wer which had watched over us throughout all the perils of our voyage,
the ship had been driven; and she had beached herself gradually on the
shore of the little island, as her way was eased by the placid lagoon
into which she entered from the troubled sea without the natural
breakwater. Here she was now fixed hard and fast forward, with her
forefoot high and dry, although there was deep water under her stern
aft.

"Thank God for his mercy!" exclaimed Mr Mackay fervently; and I'm sure
I echoed this recognition of the loving care that had so wonderfully
preserved us. "We couldn't have got in here without striking on the
reef, if we had seen the entrance before our eyes and tried our very
best; not, at all events, with that gale shoving us on and in such a sea
as is running--only look at it now!"

"Oh, aye," agreed Captain Gillespie, gazing out as we all did at the
creamy line of foaming breakers all round, that sent showers of surfy
spray over the coral ledge into the placid lagoon, which was calm and
still in comparison, like a mountain tarn, albeit filled with brackish
sea-water all the same. "Oh, aye, it's wonderful enough our getting
here; but how are we going to get out--eh?"

"No doubt we'll find a way," said the other, who had bared his head when
giving thanksgiving where it was due; and whose noble, intelligent face,
I thought, as I looked at him admiringly, seemed capable of anything, he
spoke so cheerfully, his courage not daunted but increased, it seemed,
all the more by what had happened--"No doubt we'll find a way, sir."

But "Old Jock" wouldn't be comforted.

Obstinately insisting before, against Mr Mackays advice, that we were
going on all right, he was even more dogmatically certain now that we
were all wrong; saying that, as far as he could see, the ship and her
cargo and every one of the thirty-one souls she had on board were
doomed!

"I can't see how it's going to be managed, Mackay," he replied
despondingly to the other's cheery words, even his nose drooping with
dismay at the prospect, superstition coming to aid his despairing
conviction. "I knew there was something uncanny when those pigs jumped
overboard that evening, and I told you so, if you recollect, Saunders;
and you know, when I say a thing, I mean a thing."

"Aye, aye," said the second mate, thus appealed to; and who being a
shallow-pated man with little feeling for anything save the indulgence
of his appetite, thought there was