ow you've been able to find your
way to it; for it's only a little bit of a rock after all--a hextinc'
volcano, I've heard some people say. How far d'ye reckon we are off
from it, now, Mr Troubridge?"

"Probably about seventeen or eighteen miles," said I.

"Ah!" observed Chips. "Then we ought to be abreast of it soon a'ter
breakfast." And therewith he fell into a reverie.

It was about an hour later that, preceded by a slight chilling of the
air, the first faint pallor of dawn came filtering through the velvet
darkness ahead, stealing imperceptibly higher and higher into the
eastern sky, and causing the stars thereaway to dwindle and grow dim
until, one after another, they vanished in the cold, colourless light
that now stretched along the horizon beneath our jibboom-end, spreading
right and left, even as one stood and watched it. Then a faint flush of
palest primrose stole into the pallor, against which the horizon line
ran black as ebony, with here and there a suspicion of a gleam coming
and going between it and the ship, as the growing light fell upon the
gently heaving swell. A moment later a great shaft of white light shot
perpendicularly from the horizon far ahead toward the zenith, where the
indigo was swiftly paling to purest ultramarine, the primrose hue became
more pronounced, and there, in the very midst of it, where the colour
was strongest, rose a hummock of softest, most delicate and ethereal
amethyst, clean-cut as a cameo, and shaped--as the carpenter had said--
like the back of a gigantic whale, with three well-marked protuberances
growing out of it, while others showed just clear of the water, toward
what might be supposed to be the tail end.

"There you are, Chips," I exclaimed in a fever of exultation; "there is
the island--"

"Land ho! straight ahead," shouted the lookout at this moment, as he
faced aft, pointing with his right hand over the bows.

"Ay, ay, Jimmy, my hearty, we sees it, plain enough," answered the
carpenter. Then he turned to me and continued:

"Yes, sir; there it is, as you says. Ay, and it's Saint Paul, too;
ne'er a doubt of it. I reckernizes them there hummicks a-stickin' up
out of the back of it. And I reckon that it's just about fourteen mile
away--which brings your calcilations right to a hapigraphy. Well, well,
hedication's a most wonderful thing, and no mistake. The bosun and I
might ha' searched for that there rock till all was blue, and never ha'
found it