The man looked, and then looked again; and then hallowed out joyfully, “Land—­land ahead!”

Up struggled Mr. Meeson on to his knees—­his legs were so stiff that he could not stand—­and began to stare wildly about him.

“Thank God!” he cried.  “Where is it?  Is it New Zealand?  If ever I get there, I’ll stop there.  I’ll never get on a ship again!”

“New Zealand!” growled the sailor.  “Are you a fool?  It’s Kerguelen Land, that’s what it is—­where it rains all day, and nobody lives—­not even a nigger.  It’s like enough that you’ll stop there, though; for I don’t reckon that anybody will come to take you off in a hurry.”

Mr. Meeson collapsed with a groan, and a few minutes afterwards the sun rose, while the mist grew less and less till at last it almost disappeared, revealing a grand panorama to the occupants of the boat.  For before them was line upon line of jagged and lofty peaks, stretching as far as the eye could reach, gradually melting in the distance into the cold white gleam of snow.  Bill slightly altered the boat’s course to the southward, and, sailing round a point, she came into comparatively calm water.  Then, due north of them, running into the land, they saw the mouth of a great fjord, bounded on each side by towering mountain banks, so steep as to be almost precipitous, around whose lofty sides thousands of sea fowl wheeled, awaking the echoes with their clamour.  Right into this beautiful fjord they sailed, past a line of flat rocks on which sat huge fantastic monsters that the sailors said were sea-lions, along the line of beetling cliff, till they came to a spot where the shore, on which grew a rank, sodden-looking grass, shelved gently up from the water’s edge to the frowning and precipitous background.  And here, to their huge delight, they discovered two huts roughly built of old ship’s timbers, placed within a score of yards of each other, and a distance of some fifty paces from the water’s edge.

“Well, there’s a house, anyway,” said the flat-nosed Johnnie, “though it don’t look as though it had paid rates and taxes lately.”

“Let us land, and get out of this horrible boat,” said Mr. Meeson, feebly:  a proposition that Augusta seconded heartily enough.  Accordingly, the sail was lowered, and, getting out the oars, the two sailors rowed the boat into a little, natural harbour that opened out of the main creek, and in ten minutes her occupants were once more stretching their legs upon dry land; that is, if any land in Kerguelen Island, that region of perpetual wet, could be said to be dry.