CHAPTER II.

THE HAVEN IN THE CORAL RING.

It seemed as if the storm-fiend were satisfied with the mischief he had accomplished, for immediately after the disaster just described, the gale began to moderate, and when the sun rose it had been reduced to a stiff but steady breeze.

From the moment of the accident onward, the whole crew had been exerting themselves to the utmost with axe and knife to cut and clear away the wreck of the masts and repair damages.

Not the least energetic among them was our amateur first mate, Nigel Roy.  When all had been made comparatively snug, he went aft to where his father stood beside the steersman, with his legs nautically wide apart, his sou’-wester pulled well down over his frowning brows, and his hands in their native pockets.

“This is a bad ending to a prosperous voyage,” said the youth, sadly; “but you don’t seem to take it much to heart, father!”

“How much or little I take it to heart you know nothin’ whatever about, my boy, seein’ that I don’t wear my heart on my coat-sleeve, nor yet on the point of my nose, for the inspection of all and sundry.  Besides, you can’t tell whether it’s a bad or a good endin’, for it has not ended yet one way or another.  Moreover, what appears bad is often found to be good, an’ what seems good is pretty often uncommon bad.”

“You are a walking dictionary of truisms, father!  I suppose you mean to take a philosophical view of the misfortune and make the best of it,” said Nigel, with what we may style one of his twinkling smiles, for on nearly all occasions that young man’s dark, brown eyes twinkled, in spite of him, as vigorously as any “little star” that was ever told in prose or song to do so—­and much more expressively, too, because of the eyebrows of which little stars appear to be destitute.

“No, lad,” retorted the captain; “I take a common-sense view—­not a philosophical one; an’ when you’ve bin as long at sea as I have, you’ll call nothin’ a misfortune until it’s proved to be such.  The only misfortune I have at present is a son who cannot see things in the same light as his father sees ’em.”

“Well, then, according to your own principle that is the reverse of a misfortune, for if I saw everything in the same light that you do, you’d have no pleasure in talking to me, you’d have no occasion to reason me out of error, or convince me of truth.  Take the subject of poetry, now—­”

“Luff,” said Captain Roy, sternly, to the man at the wheel.

When the man at the wheel had gone through the nautical evolution involved in “luff,” the captain turned to his son and said abruptly—­

“We’ll run for the Cocos-Keelin’ Islands, Nigel, an’ refit.”

“Are the Keeling Islands far off?”

“Lift up your head and look straight along the bridge of your nose, lad, and you’ll see them.  They’re an interesting group, are the Keelin’ Islands.  Volcanic, they are, with a coral top-dressin’, so to speak.  Sit down here an’ I’ll tell ’ee about ’em.”