nd everything still the same--
equally wild, desolate, deserted, as when we first beheld it!

Most wonderful of all, though, was the fact that we alone were saved.

We were saved!

That thought appeared to flash through all our minds at once
simultaneously; and, falling on our knees, there, on the summit of the
headland, whence we had witnessed the terrible tragedy and now gazed
down on the once more placid, treacherous sea, we each and all thanked
God for our deliverance from the peril of the waters, as He had already
delivered us from the cruelty of man--in the person of that treacherous,
drunken demon who had abandoned us there to the solitude and the misery
of exile and sailed off to enjoy, as he thought, the ill-gotten treasure
of which he had robbed us. But he had met even a worse fate than he had
meted out to us; for, what could have been worse for him than to die and
be called to account for his misdeeds at the very moment of the
realisation of his devilish design?

However, peace to his evil spirit, One greater than us poor marooned
sailors would be his Judge!

That feeling was uppermost in my mind, and I'm sure it was reciprocated
by the others, after we had returned thanks to the watchful Providence
that had saved us while snatching Captain Snaggs away in the middle of
his sins; but his name was not mentioned by any there at that moment,
nor did either of us utter a word afterwards, to each other at least, so
far as I can remember, about his treatment of us--not even Sam, to whom
throughout he had behaved the most cruelly of all.

Sailor-folk, as a rule, are not revengeful, and death we held, had
blotted out the past; so we, too, buried the skipper's misdeeds in
oblivion!

We stopped there on the cliff without speaking until it was close on
sunset.

Our hearts were too full to express the various thoughts that coursed
through our minds; and there we remained, silent and still, as if we
five were dumb.

All we did was to stare out solemnly on the vast ocean that spread out
from beneath our feet to the golden west in the far distance, where sky
and sea met on the hazy horizon--with never a sail to break its wide
expanse, with never a sound to break our solitude, save the sullen
murmuring wash of the surf as it rippled up on the beach, and the heavy,
deep-drawn sigh of the water as it rolled back to its parent ocean,
taking its weary load of pebbles and sand below, as if sick of the
monotonous task,