Page:The crater; or, Vulcan's peak.djvu/198

192 THE CRATER; rative. Bob told his story, as a matter of course, with a great deal of circumlocution, and in his own language. There was a good deal of unnecessary prolixity in it, and some irrelative digressions touching currents, and the trades, and the weather ; but, on the whole, it was given intelligibly, and with sufficient brevity for one who de voured every syllable he uttered. The reader, however, would most probably prefer to hear an abridgement of the tale in our own words. When Robert Betts was driven off the Reef, by the hurricane of the preceding year, he had no choice but to let the Neshamony drive to leeward with him. As soon as he could, he got the pinnace before the wind, and, whenever he saw broken water ahead, he endeavoured to steer clear of it. This he sometimes succeeded in effect ing ; while at others he passed through it, or over it, at the mercy of the tempest. Fortunately the wind had piled up the element in such a way as to carry the craft clear of the rocks, and in three hours after the Neshamony was lifted out of her cradle, she was in the open ocean, to leeward of all the dangers. It blew too hard, however, to make sail on her, and Bob was obliged to scud until the gale broke. Then, indeed, he passed a week in endeavouring to beat back and rejoin his friend, but without success, losing all he made in the day, while asleep at night. Such, at least, was Bob s account of his failure to find the Reef again; though Mark thought it probable that he was a little out in his reckoning, and did not look in exactly the right place for it. At the end of this week high land was made to leeward, and Betts ran down for it, in the hope of finding inhabit ants. In this last expectation, however, he did not suc ceed. It was a volcanic mountain, of a good many re sources, and of a character not unlike that of Vulcan s Peak, but entirely unpeopled. He named it after his old ship, and passed several days on it. On describing its appearance, and its bearings from the place where they then were, Mark had no doubt it was the island that was visible from the peak near them, and at which he had been gazing that very afternoon, for fully an hour, with longing