ened. As it is, it is a hint to us to
hurry up with our preparations and get away as quickly as may be from a
region where such happenings are possible. And now, lie down, again
dear, and get some more sleep, if you can. You need all that you can
get. And it appears that the disturbance is all over, for the sea is
smoothening down again, and here comes the wind, once more, back from
its proper quarter."

When dawn broke, Leslie found himself within some ten miles of his
island, but to leeward of it, Point Richard, its most northerly
extremity, then bearing a good two points on his weather bow; he
therefore tacked and made a board to the southward, with the object of
getting far enough to windward to weather the reef on the next tack.
Being now close enough to the island to get a distinct view of its
general outline, he scrutinised it most carefully in the endeavour to
discover whether the earthquake had seriously affected it; and it was
with some concern and anxiety that he thought he could detect certain
slight alterations of shape, here and there. Not, of course, that it
mattered to him, in the abstract, how much or how little the island had
altered in shape, provided--but this was a very big proviso--that it had
not so seriously affected his dockyard as to damage the cutter, or
caused the treasure-cave to collapse to such an extent as to obliterate
its situation, or bury the treasure beyond the possibility of recovery.

Anxious now to get back to the camp at the earliest possible moment,
Leslie was alternately watching the island and the luff of his mainsail,
impatiently waiting for the moment to arrive when it would be possible
to again tack to the eastward, when his eye was attracted by the
appearance of an object some distance to the eastward and broad on his
lee bow. Looking at it intently, it had to him the appearance of a mast
with a fragment of sail fluttering from it, and keen though he was upon
reaching camp with as little delay as might be, it was impossible for
him, as a sailor, to pass such an object without examination. With a
little stamp of impatience, therefore, he put up his helm and bore away
for it.

It was not very far distant--a couple of miles, perhaps: certainly not
more; and to reach it therefore involved no very serious loss of time.
It was not long ere he was close enough to it to enable him to make out
that it was a raft of some sort, rigged with a boat's oar, or a small
spar, for