For some hours he lay, not sleeping, but thinking of her, and praying for her safety. Then, as even convicts sometimes sleep the night before their execution, he, Justin, notwithstanding his own great personal peril, and his excessive anxiety for Britomarte’s fate, fell asleep, and slept long and well. CHAPTER XIII. ON THE ISLAND. When he turned out of his berth next morning he noticed that the cabin was entirely free from water, from which circumstance he judged that the waves had quite subsided. He climbed up on deck to take a look at the prospects there. He found that the ship was high and dry upon the rocks, and that the water in her hold had run out. The sky was perfectly clear and beautifully blue; and the sun shone down upon a sea as calm as the inland lake. In the pure atmosphere the distant land could be distinctly seen, with its rugged white line of rock-bound coast in strong relief between the deep blue sky and deep blue sea. But as Justin dropped his eyes upon the intervening space between the land and the wreck, an exclamation of surprise and joy escaped him. What he saw there was rescue! was safety! It was what could not have been seen at any other period since the gale, for at no other such period had the sea been so low as it was now. What he saw, then, was an extremely long and narrow chain of rocks, reaching out from the distant shore to the point upon which the ship had been wrecked. It was a natural causeway, extending from the land far out into the sea. When the sea was high, this causeway was deeply covered with water, and thus the ship, when driven so far out of her course, had struck upon it and had been wrecked. But now the sea had fallen; and the causeway was above water; so that any expert walker and climber might pass over it almost dry shod to the land. Justin was not one of the sort who stand idle and indulge in speculations while there is anything to do. He knew that the first thing for him to do was to try to reach the shore by that causeway. He knew that there was no danger of the ship breaking up just yet; unless there should be another hurricane, which was not to be expected, at least until the next change of the moon. He knew also that while she held together, the ship afforded a safer place of refuge than the unknown land might offer; for on the ship there was nothing to injure him; while on the land he might fall into the hands of cannibals. And in that case what could one man do against a whole tribe? Still, he considered, that unless he would perish in the sea when the ship should break up, that unknown land, with all its hidden dangers, must sooner or later be his destination; and he thought the sooner he ventured upon it the better.