e northward
or the southward. The northerly-trending channel might lead anywhere;
the southerly portion, on the other hand, looked as though it might
possibly take us back to the ship, the spars of which were visible some
nine miles away. We decided to try the latter, as the day was by this
time well advanced, and, should we ultimately find ourselves obliged to
retrace our steps, it would make us very late in getting back to the
ship. Fortunately, however, we were not driven to this latter
alternative, for after following the winding course of the southerly
channel for a distance of some twelve miles we arrived at the north-
eastern extremity of the basin in which the _Mercury_ lay at anchor, and
safely arrived alongside half an hour later, having spent the day in
circumnavigating a portion of the reef which we thus discovered to be
entirely surrounded by channels of a width and depth of water sufficient
to allow of the passage of the ship. This discovery, however, was of no
practical service to us; for it still left us in our original state of
uncertainty regarding the existence of a channel through which the ship
might be taken into open water.

The narrative of our efforts to find such a channel has been given thus
far with considerable detail, in order to bring home to the reader some
idea of the extreme awkwardness of our situation, and the difficulties
and perplexities with which we found ourselves confronted; but there is
no need to continue the story further in quite so detailed a form, since
the progress of our researches was unaccompanied by anything in the
nature of adventure. Let it suffice, therefore, to say that we
traversed the multitudinous canal-like channels of that labyrinthine
reef continuously for ten days longer before we found a passage of
sufficient width, and with a sufficient depth of water in it everywhere,
to enable the _Mercury_ to go through it to the open sea. This passage,
when found, proved to be a continuation of the channel originating in
the north-eastern angle of what we had now come to speak of as the
Mercury Basin, from the fact that the ship lay anchored in it. Although
it was an undoubted fact that we had actually found a channel leading
from this basin to open water, the difficulties in the way of
successfully carrying the ship through it were so great that we had very
grave doubts of our ability to accomplish it. In the first place, the
course of the channel was of so w