bethought him of returning.
It required a good deal of nerve to run in towards those rocks, under
all the circumstances of the case. The wind blew fresh, so much indeed
as to induce Mark to reef, but there must always be a heavy swell
rolling in upon that iron-bound shore. The shock of such waves expending
their whole force on perpendicular rocks may be imagined better than it
can be described. There was an undying roar all along that coast,
produced by these incessant collisions of the elements; and
occasionally, when a sea entered a cavern, in a way suddenly to expel
its air, the sound resembled that which some huge animal might be
supposed to utter in its agony, or its anger. Of course, the spray was
flying high, and the entire line of black rocks was white with its
particles.

Mark had unwittingly omitted to take any land-marks to his inlet, or
strait. He had no other means of finding it, therefore, than to discover
a spot in which the line of white was broken. This inlet, however, he
remembered did not open at right angles to the coast, but obliquely; and
it was very possible to be within a hundred yards of it, and not see it.
This fact, our young sailor was not long in ascertaining; for standing
in towards the point where he expected to find the entrance, and going
as close to the shore as he dared, he could see nothing of the desired
passage. For an hour did he search, passing to and fro, but without
success. The idea of remaining out in the open sea for the night, and to
windward of such an inhospitable coast, was anything but pleasant to
Mark, and he determined to stand to the northward, now, while it was
day, and look for some other entrance.

For four hours did Mark Woolston run along those dark rocks, whitened
only by the spray of the wide ocean, without perceiving a point at which
a boat might even land. As he was now running off the wind, and had
turned out his reef, he supposed he must have gone at least
five-and-twenty miles, if not thirty, in that time; and thus had he some
means of judging of the extent of his new territories. About five in the
afternoon a cape, or headland, was reached, when the coast suddenly
trended to the westward. This, then, was the north-eastern angle of the
entire formation, and Mark named it Cape North-East. The boat was now
jibed, and ran off west, a little northerly, for another hour, keeping
quite close in to the coast, which was no longer dangerous as soon as
the Cape wa