Page:The crater; or, Vulcan's peak.djvu/64

58 T II E C U A T E R ; that vast solitude ; and Bob Betts, who had often been in action, declared that he was much affected by it. As no immediate result was expected from the firing of these guns, Mark had no sooner discharged them, than he joined Betts. who by this time had everything ready, and prepared to quit the ship. Before he did this, however, he made an anxious and careful survey of the weather it being all-im portant to be certain no change in this respect was likely to occur in his absence. All the omens were favourable, and Bob reporting for the third time that everything was ready, the young man went over the side, and descended, with a reluctance he could not conceal, into the boat. Certainly, it was no trifling matter for men in the situation of our two mariners, to leave their vessel all alone, to be absent for a large portion of the day. It was to be done, however ; though it was done reluctantly, and not without many misgivings, in spite of the favourable signs in the atmosphere. When Mark had taken his seat in the dingui, Bob let go his hold of the ship, and set the sail. The breeze was light, and fair to go, though it was by no means so certain how it would serve them on the return. Previously to quitting the ship, Mark had taken a good look at the breakers to leeward, in order to have some general notion of the course best to steer, and he commenced his little voyage, but entirely without a plan for his own govern ment. The breakers were quite as numerous to leeward as to windward, but the fact of there being so many of them made smooth water between them. A boat, or a ship, that was once fairly a league or so within the broken lines of rocks, was like a vessel embayed, the rollers of the open ocean expending their force on the outer reefs, and coming in much reduced in size and power. Still the uneasy ocean, even* in its state of rest, is formidable at the points where its waters meet with rocks, or sands, and the break ers that did exist, even as much embayed as was the dingui, were serious matters for so small a boat to encounter. It was necessary, consequently, to steer clear of them, lest they should capsize, or fill, this, the only craft of the sort that now belonged to the vessel, the loss of which would be a most serious matter indeed. _j