got the best possible view of which their position would allow, of
everything around the ship. Bob went down, and took a glass up to his
officer, Mark sweeping the whole horizon with it, in the anxious wish to
make out something cheering in connection with the boats. The drift of
these unfortunate craft must have been towards the land, and that he
examined with the utmost care. Aided by the glass, and his elevation, he
got a tolerable view of the spot, which certainly promised as little in
the way of supplies as any other bit of naked reef he had ever seen. The
distance, however, was so great as to prevent his obtaining any certain
information on that point. One thing, however, he did ascertain, as he
feared, with considerable accuracy. After passing the glass along the
whole of that naked rock, he could see nothing on it in motion. Of birds
there were a good many, more indeed than from the extent of the visible
reef he might have expected; but no signs of man could be discovered. As
the ocean, in all directions, was swept by the glass, and this single
fragment of a reef, which was less than a mile in length, was the only
thing that even resembled land, the melancholy conviction began to force
itself on Mark and Bob, that all their shipmates had perished! They
might have perished in one of several ways; as the naked reef did not
lie precisely to leeward of the ship, the boats may have driven by it,
in the deep darkness of the past night, and gone far away out of sight
of the spot where they had left the vessel, long ere the return of day.
There was just the possibility that the spars of the ship might be seen
by the wanderers, if they were still living, and the faint hope of their
regaining the vessel, in the course of the day, by means of their oars.
It was, however, more probable that the boats had capsized in some of
the numerous fragments of breakers, that were visible even in the
present calm condition of the ocean, and that all in them had been
drowned. The best swimmer must have hopelessly perished, in such a
situation, and in such a night, unless carried by a providential