of the sea? What was this coast which Captain Turcott
had thought he saw in the darkness? To which continent did it belong? It
was only too certain that the _Dream_ had been driven out of her route
during the storm of the preceding days. The position of the ship could
not have been exactly fixed. How could there be a doubt of this when the
captain had two hours before affirmed that his charts bore no indication
of breakers in these parts! He had even done better and had gone himself
to reconnoitre these imaginary reefs which his look-outs had reported
they had seen in the east.

It nevertheless had been only too true, and Captain Turcott's
reconnaissance would have certainly prevented the catastrophe if it had
only been pushed far enough. But what was the good of returning to the
past?

The important question in face of what had happened--a question of life
or death--was for Godfrey to know if he was near to some land. In what
part of the Pacific there would be time later on to determine. Before
everything he must think as soon as the day came of how to leave the
rock, which in its biggest part could not measure more that twenty yards
square. But people do not leave one place except to go to another. And
if this other did not exist, if the captain had been deceived in the
fog, if around the breakers there stretched a boundless sea, if at the
extreme point of view the sky and the water seemed to meet all round the
horizon?

The thoughts of the young man were thus concentrated on this point. All
his powers of vision did he employ to discover through the black night
if any confused mass, any heap of rocks or cliffs, would reveal the
neighbourhood of land to the eastward of the reef.

Godfrey saw nothing. Not a smell of earth reached his nose, not a
sensation of light reached his eyes, not a sound reached his ears. Not a
bird traversed the darkness. It seemed that around him there was nothing
but a vast desert of water.

Godfrey did not hide from himself that the chances were a thousand to
one that he was lost. He no longer thought of making the tour of the
world, but of facing death, and calmly and bravely his thoughts rose to
that Providence which can do all things for the feeblest of its
creatures, though the creatures can do nothing of themselves. And so
Godfrey had to wait for the day to resign himself to his fate, if safety
was impossible; and, on the contrary, to try everything, if there was
any chance of life.