er that it looked pretty much like a dead whale floatin' high out
o' the water; and he was right; it did. Oh yes, I'll reckernize it
again fast enough, if I claps my eyes upon it, never fear."

"Well," said I, "I expect it to heave in sight to-morrow at dawn, under
the jibboom-end, some fourteen or fifteen miles distant, if the wind and
weather last as they are now--which I believe will be the case, since
the barometer remains steady. It is your morning watch, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir; my eight hours out to-night," answered Chips.

"Then," said I, turning to the boatswain, "when you call the carpenter
to-morrow morning, at the end of the middle watch, please give me a call
also; for, never yet having sighted the island, I should like to be on
deck when it heaves into view, and get a good look at it."

"All right, sir," answered Polson; "I'll rouse ye out, never fear."

The weather held fine all through that night, with the breeze light but
steady at south; when, having been duly called by the boatswain at four
o'clock the next morning, I turned out and went on deck, the ship, with
her spars almost upright, was sliding very gently along over a sea so
smooth that her mastheads seemed scarcely to sway at all among the
brilliant stars that thickly jewelled the deep indigo vault overhead.
The silence of night lay heavy upon the breast of the placid deep, and
seemed to be emphasised rather than broken by the faint sigh of the
breeze through the maze of spars and rigging that towered aloft, the
soft seething and plash of water along the bends, the light creak or
cheep of some parral or sheave up in the velvet darkness, and the
occasional clank of the tiller chains as the watchful helmsman, with his
eye upon some star peering past the weather leach of the main-royal,
found it necessary to give the ship a spoke of the wheel one way or the
other. The watch had stowed themselves away somewhere about the fore
deck, doubtless taking a quiet catnap somewhere out of reach of the
heavy dew, and were not to be seen; but the figure of the lookout on the
topgallant forecastle could be just made out, momentarily eclipsing
first one low-lying star and then another, as he paced monotonously to
and fro athwartships to keep himself awake.

As I stood there at the head of the weather poop ladder, abstractedly
watching this man's movements, it suddenly struck me that there was one
point upon the horizon, straight ahead, where the night gloom