“There is some good and some bad, as in everything,” replied the sailor.  “We shall see.  But now the ebb is evidently making.  In three hours we will attempt the passage, and once on the other side, we will try to get out of this scrape, and I hope may find the captain.”  Pencroft was not wrong in his anticipations.  Three hours later at low tide, the greater part of the sand forming the bed of the channel was uncovered.  Between the islet and the coast there only remained a narrow channel which would no doubt be easy to cross.

About ten o’clock, Gideon Spilett and his companions stripped themselves of their clothes, which they placed in bundles on their heads, and then ventured into the water, which was not more than five feet deep.  Herbert, for whom it was too deep, swam like a fish, and got through capitally.  All three arrived without difficulty on the opposite shore.  Quickly drying themselves in the sun, they put on their clothes, which they had preserved from contact with the water, and sat down to take counsel together what to do next.

Chapter 4

All at once the reporter sprang up, and telling the sailor that he would rejoin them at that same place, he climbed the cliff in the direction which the Negro Neb had taken a few hours before.  Anxiety hastened his steps, for he longed to obtain news of his friend, and he soon disappeared round an angle of the cliff.  Herbert wished to accompany him.

“Stop here, my boy,” said the sailor; “we have to prepare an encampment, and to try and find rather better grub than these shell-fish.  Our friends will want something when they come back.  There is work for everybody.”

“I am ready,” replied Herbert.

“All right,” said the sailor; “that will do.  We must set about it regularly.  We are tired, cold, and hungry; therefore we must have shelter, fire, and food.  There is wood in the forest, and eggs in nests; we have only to find a house.”

“Very well,” returned Herbert, “I will look for a cave among the rocks, and I shall be sure to discover some hole into which we can creep.”

“All right,” said Pencroft; “go on, my boy.”

They both walked to the foot of the enormous wall over the beach, far from which the tide had now retreated; but instead of going towards the north, they went southward.  Pencroft had remarked, several hundred feet from the place at which they landed, a narrow cutting, out of which he thought a river or stream might issue.  Now, on the one hand it was important to settle themselves in the neighborhood of a good stream of water, and on the other it was possible that the current had thrown Cyrus Harding on the shore there.