le over
four fathoms; the next, four and a half fathoms; and the next, five
fathoms; whereupon I gave the word to let go the anchor and haul down
the staysail, at the same time abandoning the wheel and springing to the
main topsail halyard, which I let run. By the time that we had once
more furled our canvas, breakfast was ready, and we all sat down to it
with excellent appetites.

Having breakfasted, Gurney and I again betook ourselves aloft to the
main topmast crosstrees, carrying the ship's telescope with us, our
object being to subject the reef to a thorough scrutiny, in the hope
that, with the sun now high in the heavens, and the light as good as it
was likely to be, we might be fortunate enough to discover a way of
escape from our extraordinary prison.

As a matter of fact we did now get a much clearer and, on the whole,
more satisfactory view of the reef than upon the previous occasion; but
although we perceived a perfect network of channels--some so narrow as
scarcely to permit the passage of a boat, while others were wide enough
in places actually to allow a ship to work to windward in them--the
inequalities in the surface of the reef were so great as to render it
impossible for us to trace any of them for more than three or four miles
at the utmost. There were four channels, wide enough to allow the
passage of the ship, branching out from the basin in which we lay, one
trending toward the north-east; another running off toward the north-
west, and then, apparently, by a zigzag course ultimately leading to
open water on the west side of the reef; a third running west out of the
basin for a distance of about three miles, beyond which its farther
course became untraceable; and a fourth, broad on our starboard bow,
which looked the most promising of all. We counted seven pools, or
lakelets, in addition and similar to our own--three to the northward,
one to the eastward, two to the southward, and one to the south-westward
of our own; but the one in which the _Mercury_ floated seemed to be the
largest of them all. The reef appeared to be composed wholly of rock,
covered for the most part with weed, but with broad expanses of sand
here and there, interspersed with mud banks; and its height above the
ocean level seemed to vary from about a foot to ten or fifteen feet,
with occasional isolated hummocks, rising perhaps as high in some cases
as forty feet. With the aid of the telescope we were able to perceive
tha