Chapter XVI: The Island of Bohoola

But there is an end to all things, and at last the long wished for breeze sprang up. The sails filled once more, the ship sped on and hope revived.

A welcome sound at noon the next day brought everyone on deck.

"Land, ho!" called the forward watch.

"Where away!" shouted the mate who was on duty.

"Off the starboard bow!"

The captain had just finished his task of determining their location, and had recognized the fact that the island they sought might be near at hand.

The hours went by more swiftly now, all watching interestedly the new field of their endeavor, the Treasure Isle. Would they find fortune and a successful ending to their venture? Oddly enough the thought uppermost in the minds of all was the possible abundant supply, not of treasure, but of fresh water and something good to eat.

The land which they were rapidly approaching appeared to be of considerable extent. Headlands, it was seen, rose somewhat abruptly from the sea. At their base they could see a line of white caused by the incessant action of the waves as they broke upon the shore.

"It doesn't seem as if there was any place to make a landing," said the professor, looking at the long line of breakers and the spray that was flung in the air.

"Can't tell until you are close in," replied the captain. "We'll run along the shore a ways."

Continuing thus till within half a mile of the coast, the yacht was brought about, and with sails close hauled, followed its contour for quite some time without success.

"Looks like a bit of smooth water over there," said the captain, indicating a place in the near distance. "Bring her up to the wind," he ordered. "We will take a look into it."

The yacht had now been brought about and with sheets eased off she was drifting slowly on the tide.

"Who will compose the first landing party?" asked the captain.

"Jim, Juarez and myself," answered the professor. "The steward and one of the crew to row."

The boat was launched and equipped. One empty water cask and a bucket was carried along. Was the island inhabited? From the ship's deck no sign of life was discernible to the naked eye or indeed by careful search with the spy glass. The party went, however, fully armed and prepared for any emergency.

There was, they found, a recession in the shore several hundred feet in width through which the waves extended their course, later to break in foam on submerged rocks a hundred yards beyond.

The boat shot rapidly forward, and readily passed through the opening between the cliffs. On each side, the rocks, jagged and rough, rose threateningly, but a further recess to the right afforded shelter, and the water became comparatively smooth. Passing through the channel and rounding the obstructing rocks they found another passage of similar extent which led further inland and brought them into a little crescent shaped bay of something like a half mile in length by a quarter of a mile in width. At several points were observed small strips of sandy beach, and strange wading birds of the stork species were seen, but not a suggestion or sign of a habitation.

"Crescent Bay!" cried Jim, noting the shape. "Isn't it fine here!"

"It's fine!" exclaimed the professor. "Who would think of such a place as this hidden away in the fastness of these hills. It's like some of the secret haunts of the buccaneers."

"It would be a nice bit of seamanship to bring a craft through that channel, though," said Juarez.

"But I believe it could be done," said Jim.

The scenery grew wilder and more beautiful with every stroke of the oars. From caverns of leafy shade came the gleam and flicker of many colored plumage.

Few readers but are familiar with the glowing color in which voyagers have painted the beautiful islands of the South Pacific. Nature has lavished upon them her rarest gifts; deep shadowy groves, valleys musical with murmuring streams, lofty mountains rising into the sapphire heaven out of a girdle of eternal foliage; wonderous visions of color in shrub and flower, the golden-yellow of the low-growing chinquapins, and the blood red osiers; a bright fresh air, redolent of fragrance, and a sea dimpling in cloudless sunshine.

But this fairy region, where Shakespeare might have fitly placed his Oberon and Titania, was inhabited by a race unworthy of its charms; a race enervated and corrupted, and abandoned to all those vices which usually accompany or originate in a degrading and sanguinary idolatry.

The Tahitians were not cannibals, but they sacrificed human victims in frightful numbers on the shrines of their hideous divinities.

Intoxication and theft were their predominant vices; continual wars decimated the population so that in some cases great islands were left absolutely without an inhabitant; infanticide was a universally prevalent custom, and that fully two-thirds of the young were cruelly murdered is a fact vouched for by the missionary Williams, one of the most intelligent, persevering, and successful of the pioneers of the true religion in Polynesia. This beautiful Tahitian group of islands was, therefore, a sink of vice and crime.