ts appeared among the rocks,
carpeted with their slimy sea-weed.

Did not this sand indicate more or less the presence of a beach, and if
the beach existed, could there be a doubt but what it belonged to the
coast of a more important land? At length a long profile of low hills,
buttressed with huge granitic rocks, became clearly outlined and seemed
to shut in the horizon on the east. The sun had drunk up all the morning
vapours, and his disc broke forth in all its glory.

"Land! land!" exclaimed Godfrey.

And he stretched his hands towards the shore-line, as he knelt on the
reef and offered his thanks to Heaven.

It was really land. The breakers only formed a projecting ridge,
something like the southern cape of a bay, which curved round for about
two miles or more. The bottom of the curve seemed to be a level beach,
bordered by trifling hills, contoured here and there with lines of
vegetation, but of no great size.

From the place which Godfrey occupied, his view was able to grasp the
whole of this side.

Bordered north and south by two unequal promontories, it stretched away
for, at the most, five or six miles. It was possible, however, that it
formed part of a large district. Whatever it was, it offered at the
least temporary safety. Godfrey, at the sight, could not conceive a
doubt but that he had not been thrown on to a solitary reef, and that
this morsel of ground would satisfy his earliest wants.

"To land! to land!" he said to himself.

But before he left the reef, he gave a look round for the last time. His
eyes again interrogated the sea away up to the horizon. Would some raft
appear on the surface of the waves, some fragment of the _Dream_, some
survivor, perhaps?

Nothing. The launch even was not there, and had probably been dragged
into the common abyss.

Then the idea occurred to Godfrey that among the breakers some of his
companions might have found a refuge, and were, like him, waiting for
the day to try and reach the shore.

There was nobody, neither on the rocks, nor on the beach! The reef was
as deserted as the ocean!

But in default of survivors, had not the sea thrown up some of the
corpses? Could not Godfrey find among the rocks, along to the utmost
boundary of the surf, the inanimate bodies of some of his companions?

No! Nothing along the whole length of the breakers, which the last
ripples of the ebb had now left bare.

Godfrey was alone! He could only count on himself to battl