Zermatt, Ernest and Jack, Mr. and Mrs. Wolston, and Hannah accompanied them.

 

            It was on that island at the entrance into Deliverance Bay that the last farewells were exchanged, while the launch took the baggage to the corvette.

 

            There could be no question of writing, since no means of communication existed between England and New Switzerland. No; they only spoke of seeing each other once more, of returning as speedily as might be, and of resuming their life together again.

 

            Then the ship's boat of the Unicorn came for Jenny Montrose, for Dolly Wolston entrusted to her care, and for Fritz and Frank, and took them on board.

 

            Half an hour later the Unicorn weighed anchor, and with a fair north-east breeze behind her she stood out to the open sea, after having saluted the flag of New Switzerland with a discharge of three guns.

 

            To this salute the guns from the battery on Shark's Island, fired by Ernest and Jack, replied.

 

            An hour later the top sails of the corvette had disappeared behind the farthest rocks of False Hope Point.

 

 

CHAPTER IV - A RETROSPECT

 

            IT will now be proper to give the reader a summary of the first ten years spent in New Switzerland by the survivors of the wreck of the Landlord. On the 7th of October, in the year 1803, a family was cast upon an unknown land situated in the east of the Indian Ocean.

 

            The head of this family, of Swiss origin, was named Jean Zermatt, his wife was named Betsy. The former was thirty-five years of age, the latter thirty-three. They had four children, all sons, in the following order of birth: Fritz, then fifteen; Ernest, twelve; Jack, ten; and Frank, six.

 

            It was on the seventh day of an appalling storm that the Landlord, on which they had embarked, was driven out of her course in the midst of the ocean. Blown southwards, far beyond Batavia, her port of destination, she struck a mass of rock about four miles from the coast.

 

            M. Zermatt was an intelligent and well-informed man, his wife a brave and devoted woman. Their children presented varieties of character. Fritz was bold and active, Ernest the most serious and studious of the four, though inclined to be selfish, Jack thoughtless and full of fun, Frank still almost a baby. They were a most united family, quite capable of doing well even in the terrible conditions into which evil fortune had just plunged them. Moreover, all of them were animated by deep religious feeling.

 

            M. Zermatt had realised his few effects and left the land of his birth to settle in one of those Dutch over-sea possessions which at that time were at the height of their prosperity, and offered so much promise to active and hardworking men. Now, after a fair voyage across the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, the ship which carried him and his family had been cast away. He and his wife and children, alone of all the crew and passengers of the Landlord, had survived the wreck. But it was necessary to abandon without the least delay the ship, entangled among the rocks of the reef. Her hull rent, her masts broken off, her keel snapped in half, and exposed to all the waves of the open sea, the next gale would complete her destruction and scatter her fragments far and wide.

 

            Fastening half a dozen tubs together by means of ropes and planks, M. Zermatt and his sons succeeded in making a sort of raft, on which all the family took their seats before the day drew to an end. The sea was calm, scarcely heaving with a slow swell, and the flowing tide ran towards the coast. After leaving a long promontory on the starboard side, the floating raft came ashore in a little bay where a river emptied itself.

 

            As soon as the various articles brought from the ship had been set ashore a tent was pitched in this spot which afterwards received the name of Tent Home. The encampment was gradually completed with the ship's cargo which M. Zermatt and his sons went on the following days to take from the hold of the Landlord, utensils, furniture, bedding, tinned meats, grain of various kinds, plants, sporting guns, casks of wine and liqueurs, tins of biscuits, cheeses and hams, clothes, linen, everything, in short, which was carried in this four-hundred ton vessel freighted to supply the requirements of a new colony.

 

            They found that game, both furred and feathered, swarmed upon this coast. Whole flocks and herds were seen, of agoutis, a kind of hare with head like that of a pig, ondatras, a species of musk rat, buffaloes, ducks, flamingoes, bustards, grouse, peccaries, and antelopes. In the waters of the bay which spread beyond the creek was abundance of salmon, sturgeon, herrings, and a score of other species of fish, as well as mussels, oysters, lobsters, crayfish, and crabs. In the surrounding country, where cassava and sweet potatoes flourished, cotton trees and cocoa trees were growing together with mangroves, palms and other tropical species.

 

            Thus existence seemed to be assured to these shipwrecked folk, upon this land of whose bearings they knew nothing at all.

 

            It had been found possible to land a number of domestic animals—Turk, an English dog; Floss, a Danish bitch; two goats, six sheep, a sow in farrow, an ass, a cow, and a perfect poultry yard of cocks, hens, turkeys, geese, ducks, and pigeons, which soon acclimatised themselves to the surface of the ponds and marshes and the grass lands adjoining the coast.

 

            The final trips to the ship had emptied it of everything valuable or useful that it contained. Several four-pounder cannons were conveyed to the shore for the defence of the encampment, and also a pinnace, a light vessel which, as all its pieces were numbered, could easily be put together, and to which the name Elizabeth was given in compliment to Betsy. M. Zermatt was then master of a ship, brigantine-rigged, fifteen tons burthen, with square stern and after deck. Thus he had every facility for exploring the seas either to the east or the west, and for rounding the neighbouring promontories, one of which broke away towards the north in a sharp point while the other stretched out opposite Tent Home.

 

            The mouth of the river was framed within lofty rocks which rendered it difficult of access, and self-defence there would be easy, at any rate against wild beasts.

 

            One question which arose was as to whether the Zermatts had reached the shore of an island or of a continent washed by the waters of the Indian Ocean. The only information they had on this point was derived from the bearings taken by the commander of the Landlord before the shipwreck.

 

            The ship was approaching Batavia when she was struck by a storm which lasted for six days and threw her far out of her course, to the south-east. The day before the captain had fixed his position as being latitude 130 40' south, and longitude 1140 5' east of the island of Ferro in the Canary Group. As the wind had blown constantly from the north, it was a fair assumption that the longitude had not varied appreciably. By keeping the meridian at about the hundred and fourteenth degree, M. Zermatt concluded from an observation of latitude, taken with a sextant, that the Landlord must have drifted approximately six degrees southward, and consequently, that the coast of Tent Home could be located between the nineteenth and the twentieth parallels.

 

            It followed that this land must be, in round figures, between six and seven hundred miles west of Australia.