, or being
herself descried by human eye. Fearful thought--appalling prospect to
those constrained to sit at her cabin-table!

With that before their minds, the morning light brings no joy. Instead,
it but intensifies their misery. For they are now sure they have no
chance of being rescued.

They sit haggard in their chairs--for no sleep has visited the eyes of
either--like men who have been all night long engaged in a drunken
debauch.

Alas! how different! The glasses of wine before them are no longer
touched, nor the fruits tasted. Neither the bouquet of the one, nor the
perfume of the other, has any charm for them now. Either is as much
beyond their reach, as if a thousand miles off, instead of on a table
between them!

Gazing in one another's faces, they at once fancy it a dream. They can
scarcely bring themselves to realise such a situation! Who could! The
rude intrusion of the ruffian crew--the rough handling they have had--
the breaking open of the lockers--and the boxes of gold borne off--all
seem but the phantasmagoria of some horrible vision!

CHAPTER SIXTY FIVE.

PARTITIONING THE SPOIL.

The same sun that shines upon the abandoned barque lights up the men who
abandoned her, still on that spot where they came ashore. As the first
rays fall over the cliff's crest, they show a cove of semicircular
shape, backed by a beetling precipice. A ledge or dyke, sea-washed, and
weed-covered, trends across its entrance, with a gate-like opening in
the centre, through which, at high tide, the sea sweeps in, though never
quite up to the base of the cliff. Between this and the strand lies the
elevated platform already spoken of, accessible from above by a sloping
ravine, the bed of a stream running only when it rains. As said, it is
only an acre or so in extent, and occupying the inner concavity of the
semicircle. The beach is not visible from it, this concealed by the dry
reef which runs across it as the chord of an arc. Only a small portion
of it can be seen through the portal which admits the tidal flow.
Beyond, stretches the open sea outside the surf, with the breakers more
than a mile off.

Such is the topography of the place where the mutineers have made
landing and passed the night. When the day dawns, but little is there
seen to betray their presence. Only a man seated upon a stone, nodding
as if asleep, at intervals awakening with a start, and grasping at a gun
between his legs; soon l