How earnestly I watched the rising of the waters; and night came on as I waited.

Slowly and surely they crept up the bows, and the ship gradually assumed her natural level until at length the stanch little craft floated safe and sound once more, apparently very little the worse for her strange experience.

And then away I went on my way--by this time almost schooled to indifference.

Had she gone down I must inevitably have succumbed on those coral reefs, for the stock of biscuits and water I had been able to put aboard the raft would only have lasted a very few days.
For nearly a fortnight after the day of the great storm I kept on the same course without experiencing any unpleasant incident or check, always excepting the curious threatened wreck which I have just mentioned.
Just before dusk on the evening of the thirteenth day, I caught sight of an island in the distance--Melville Island I now know it to be; and I was greatly puzzled to see smoke floating upwards apparently from many fires kindled on the beach.

I knew that they were signals of some kind, and at first I fancied that it must be one of the friendly Malay islands that I was approaching.