The sea had now resumed its usual appearance, and every trace of the water-spout was gone, so that it was impossible to fix the spot where it had broken. Not a vestige of the canoe, or of her ill-fated company, was anywhere to be seen. We sailed backward and forward in the neighbourhood of the place, carefully scrutinising the surface in every direction, and traversing several times the spot, as nearly as we could determine it, where the canoe had last been seen: but our search was fruitless: the long billows swelled and subsided with their wonted regularity, and their rippled summits glittered as brightly in the sunshine as ever, but they revealed no trace of those whom they had so suddenly and remorselessly engulfed. The water-spout which had first been seen, had disappeared, and a few heavy clouds in the zenith alone remained, as evidences of the terrific phenomenon which we had just witnessed. CHAPTER TWELVE. OUR ISLAND HOME. THE ILLUSION OF THE GOLDEN HAZE--THE WALL OF BREAKERS--A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE--THE ISLET OF PALMS. "Keel never ploughed that lonely sea, That isle no human eye hath viewed; Around it still in tumult rude, The surges everlastingly, Burst on the coral-girded shore With mighty bound and ceaseless roar; A fresh unsullied work of God, By human footstep yet untrod." The native lad now seemed to be quite overwhelmed with grief. He had made no manifestations of it while we were endeavouring to discover some trace of his companions, but when at length we relinquished the attempt, and it became certain that they had all perished, he uttered a low, wailing cry, full of distress and anguish, and laying his head upon his hands, sobbed bitterly. The Frenchman had told us that the island lay to the northward; and we now put the head of the boat in that direction, steering by the sun, which was just setting. When the first violence of the boy's grief had somewhat abated, Arthur spoke to him gently, in the dialect of the Society Islands. He listened attentively, turning his large eyes upon Arthur's face with an expression of mingled timidity and interest and replied in a low, musical voice. They seemed to understand one another, and talked together for some time. The language spoken by the boy, differed so little, as Arthur told us, from that of the Tahitians, that he easily gathered the meaning of what he said. Upon being questioned as to the distance of the island, and the course which we must steer in order to reach it, he pointed to a bright star, just beginning to be visible in the north-east.