Behind us was a cliff, apparently of rock but covered with earth and vegetation, and against this cliff, in which the prow of the ship was buried, she, or what remained of her, had come to anchor for the last time.
"You see what has happened," I said.

"A great tidal wave has carried us up here and retreated." "That's it," exclaimed Bickley.

"Look at 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.