CHAPTER XXI.
Sagacious and moral remarks in regard to life--A sail!--An unexpected salute--The end of the black cat--A terrible dive--An incautious proceeding and a frightful catastrophe.
Life is a strange compound.

Peterkin used to say of it, that it beat a druggist's shop all to sticks; for, whereas the first is a compound of good and bad, the other is a horrible compound of all that is utterly detestable.

And indeed the more I consider it the more I am struck with the strange mixture of good and evil that exists not only in the material earth but in our own natures.

In our own Coral Island we had experienced every variety of good that a bountiful Creator could heap on us.

Yet on the night of the storm we had seen how almost, in our case,--and altogether, no doubt, in the case of others less fortunate--all this good might be swept away for ever.