"Shall we venture?" cried Paul Blunt, soliciting an assent by the very manner in which he put the question. "What say you, dear father?" "I hope we may not yet be too late to succour some Christian in distress, my child. Take the tiller, Mr. Blunt, and in Heaven's good name, and for humanity's sake, let us proceed!" The boat advanced, Paul Blunt standing erect to steer, his ardour to proceed corrected by apprehensions on account of her precious freight. There was an instant when the ladies trembled, for it seemed as if the light boat was about to be cast upon the shore, like the froth of the sea that shot past them; but the steady hand of him who steered averted the danger, and in another minute they were floating at the side of the jolly-boat. The ladies got ashore without much difficulty, and stood on the summit of the rocks. "Nous voici donc, en Afrique," exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville, with that sensation of singularity that comes over all when they first find themselves in situations of extraordinary novelty. "The wreck--the wreck," murmured Eve; "let us go to the wreck. There may be yet a hope of saving some wretched sufferer." Toward the wreck they all proceeded, after leaving two of the servants to relieve Mr. Monday on his watch. It was an impressive thing to stand at the side of a ship on the sands of Africa, a scene in which the desolation of an abandoned vessel was heightened by the desolation of a desert. The position of the vessel, which stood nearly erect, imbedded in the sands, rendered it less difficult than might be supposed for the ladies to ascend to, and to walk her decks, a rude staging having been made already to facilitate the passage. Here the scene became thrice exciting, for it was the very type of a hastily deserted and cherished dwelling. Before Eve and Mademoiselle Viefville gained the deck, the other party had ascertained that no living soul remained. The trunks, chests, furniture, and other appliances of the cabin, had been rummaged, and many boxes had been raised from the hold, and plundered, a part of their contents still lying scattered on the decks. The ship, however, had been lightly freighted, and the bulk of her cargo, which was salt, was apparently untouched. A Danish ensign was found bent to the halyards, a proof that Captain Truck's original conjecture concerning the character of the vessel was accurate, her name, too, was ascertained to be the Carrier, as translated into English, and she belonged to Copenhagen. More than this it was not easy to ascertain. No papers were found, and her cargo, or as much of it as remained, was so mixed, and miscellaneous, as Saunders called it, that no plausible guess could be given as to the port where it had been taken in, if indeed it had all been received on board at the same place.