A Queer Race: The Story of a Strange People — page 84: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A QUEER RACE 81 hind, hope and a harbor of refuge before us. We are in a wide, crescent-shape bay, fringed with a shore of white sand, from which rises, in gentle slopes, a glorious moun- tain, on whose summit waves a cloud-banner, which at first sight I mistake for the smoke of a volcano. Save for the white limestone crags with which it is crowned, the mountain is clad with verdure from top to bottom. Field alternates with forest; I can distinguish roads, too, and here and there is a quaint house of wood, not unlike the chalets that lend so great a charm to the valleys of Switzerland and the Tyrol. All this, of course, through a binocular. We are still too far off to see much with the naked eye. ‘‘Teaven only knows where we are,” I said to Tom, who by this time had come aft. ‘‘ But it seems a civil- izei sort of place. No danger of our being killed and eaten, I think.” ‘Not a bit. Cannibals don’t build houses or make: roads like them there. I wonder whether it’s an island or a continent? Anyhow, it is well protected. That line of reefs stretches from one point of the bay to the other. It isa miracle how we got through. If the fog had not lifted just when it did—and it did not lift much —we should have gone to everlasting smash. We came out of it; that was it. Look there!’ It was true. Beyond the barrier rocks the mist still rested on the sea, looking in the distance like a chain of biliowy mountains. | t «¢The tide—or maybe it’s a current—is running fast, said the boatswain, a few minutes later. ‘‘I wonder whether we are in soundings? Iwill heave the lead, and if we are, we must make ready to let go.” He had evidently not seen the inscription on the white rock; and it was quite as well He would have been able to think of nothing else. «* By all means,” I answered. ‘‘iIt would never do to run aground, and there is not much chance of getting a pilot, [ fear.” Whereupon Tom took the lead and went into the chains, When he came back he reported that the depth was nine fathoms, the bottom sandy, and the water rapidly shoal- ing. He thought that, to be on the safe side, we should (E(0) nm G 00 (EO)