While they were singing the hymns of thanksgiving in the saloon that night, and listening to the fervent prayers; while they ate, drank and were merry, their thoughts were not of the day but of the morrow.

What of the morrow?
In the eyes of every one who laughed and sang dwelt the unchanging shadow of anxiety; on every face was stamped an expression that spoke more plainly than words the doubts and misgivings that constituted the background of their jubilation.

They had escaped the sea, but would they ever escape the land?
Had God, in answer to their complaints and prayers, directed them to a land from which the hand of man would never rescue them?
Were they isolated here in the untraversed southern seas, cast upon an island unknown to the rest of the world?
Or were they, on the other hand, within reach of human agencies by which the world might be made acquainted with their plight?
Uppermost in every mind was the sickening recollection, however, that for days they had ranged the sea without sighting a single craft.

They were far from the travelled lanes, they were out of the worth-while world.

Hope rested solely on the possibility that the hills and forests hid from view the houses and wharves of a desolate little sea-town set up by the far-reaching people of the British Isles.
The story of Percival's achievement was not long in going the rounds.
It went through the customary process of elaboration.