MAN LEANS UPON HIS BROKEN REED. 
381 
them still drifting past; but, warned by nature’s sure 
instinct, they, like the whale, avoided the risk of being 
thrown upon those pointed rocks, or sucked into those 
fathomless holes, by preserving a safe distance. They, 
too, using with ease the means of escape furnished them 
by an all-providing Being, left man to lean upon liis 
broken reed and die — alone. Even the lost and wearied 
land-birds, which for days past had found food and 
shelter upon our decks, deserted us for a rocky perch 
just over the dark and roaring cavern toward which we 
were slowly drifting, as if selecting a commanding point 
from which to witness the approaching work of dissolu- 
tion. The very dogs crouched at our feet in trembling 
fear as the noise of the rushing waters startled them, and 
howled piteously as they gazed into faces so changed by 
deep and terrible emotion. Millions of bats and swal- 
lows left their thousand nests at those dismal and un- 
known sounds, startled by the unusual proximity of man 
to their desolate haunts, and, circling through and around 
our gear and decks, added their harsh, discordant screams 
to the roaring of the waters, and interposed their black 
and crowded piasses between us and the morning sun. 
They were like dense clouds casting their passing sha- 
dows over us, — gloomy shadows, that might be shading a 
more gloomy fate. 
Backward, — slowly backward ! 
God of heaven ! must we, in this quiet state of mo- 
tionless inactivity’, drift inch by inch into that howling 
cavern, or wilfully throw ourselves upon the sharp rocks 
of the sunken reef as the only alternative ? Is man, and 
man only, with the vast resources of his mighty intellect 
