t the debris," and he pointed to
torn-up palms, bushes and seaweed piled into heaps which still ran salt
water; also to a number of dead fish that lay about among them, adding,
"Well, we are saved anyhow."

"And yet there are people like you who say that there is no Providence!"
ejaculated Bastin.

"I wonder what the views of Captain Astley and the crew are, or rather
were, upon that matter," interrupted Bickley.

"I don't know," answered Bastin, looking about him vaguely. "It is true
that I can't see any of them, but if they are drowned no doubt it is
because their period of usefulness in this world had ended."

"Let's get down and look about us," I remarked, being anxious to avoid
further argument.

So we scrambled from the remnant of the ship, like Noah descending out
of the ark, as Bastin said, on to the beach beneath, where Tommy rushed
to and fro, gambolling for joy. Here we discovered a path which ran
diagonally up the side of a cliff which was nowhere more than fifty or
sixty feet in height, and possibly had once formed the shore of this
land, or perhaps that of a lake. Up this path we went, following the
tracks of many human feet, and reaching the crest of the cliff, looked
about us, basking as we did so in the beautiful morning sun, for the sky
was now clear of clouds and with that last awful effort, which destroyed
our ship, the cyclone had passed away.

We were standing on a plain down which ran a little stream of good water
whereof Tommy drank greedily, we following his example. To the right and
left of this plain, further than we could see, stretched bushland over
which towered many palms, rather ragged now because of the lashing of
the gale. Looking inland we perceived that the ground sloped gently
downwards, ending at a distance of some miles in a large lake. Far out
in this lake something like the top of a mountain of a brown colour
rose above the water, and on the edge of it was what from that distance
appeared to be a tumbled ruin.

"This is all very interesting," I said to Bickley. "What do you make of
it?"

"I don't quite know. At first sight I should say that we are standing on
the lip of a crater of some vast extinct volcano. Look how it curves to
north and south and at the slope running down to the lake."

I nodded.

"Lucky that the tidal wave did not get over the cliff," I said. "If it
had the people here would have all been drowned out. I wonder where they
have gone?"

As I spoke