d
delicate of tint as a cloud in the brilliant light of the newly risen
sun, but that it was good, solid earth was clear enough from the fact
that it did not in the slightest degree alter its truncated conical
shape as the minutes sped. True, there was no land shown on the chart
at that precise spot; but that did not alter the fact of it being there;
and since it showed above the horizon from the deck at a distance which
we estimated at fully _fifty_ miles, it was concluded that it must be of
fairly respectable size, and quite worth looking at more closely; the
helm was therefore shifted, and we kept dead away for it.

The ship was slipping along at about seven knots, before a nice little
easterly breeze, under all plain sail--that being as much canvas as I
cared to show, bearing in mind the fact that not infrequently, of late,
we had been obliged to haul our wind rather suddenly in consequence of
white water revealing itself unexpectedly at no great distance ahead.
But although we were travelling at this quite respectable pace--for the
_Mercury_--we did not appear to be decreasing our distance from the land
ahead nearly so rapidly as we had anticipated, which circumstance led me
to the conclusion that I had considerably underestimated that distance
in the first instance. And this conclusion proved to be correct, for at
six bells in the afternoon watch we were still fully seven miles from
the island. But we had arrived within four miles of what, from the fore
topmast crosstrees, I had been able to identify as a barrier reef that
appeared to extend from the northern to the southern extremity of the
island--and, indeed, might completely surround it, for aught that I
could tell--enclosing a magnificently spacious harbour, some three miles
wide between itself and the island, which I estimated to measure about
ten miles long, from north to south, with a peak, apparently the crater
of an extinct, or at all events a quiescent, volcano, approximating to
three thousand feet high, rising almost in the centre of it. It was
wooded from the inner margin of the somewhat narrow, sandy beach that
lined it to within about three hundred feet of the summit of the peak;
and--most promising of all, from the point of view of Wilde and his
followers--there were no canoes on the beach, or any other signs of
inhabitants.

CHAPTER TEN.

WE ARRIVE AT THE ISLAND.

The surf was breaking heavily over the whole length of the barrier reef;