"No thankye, sir. If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not. Once
was quite enough. Of course, if you say I am to look, sir, there I am."

"Oh no, I don't want you. Go back to bed. It's a miserable place, Ned,
but I dare say there will be some good fishing."

"Take a lot of good fishing, sir, and they'd have to be very fresh, to
make it worth staying for. Good-night, sir."

"Good-morning, Ned," said Jack with a faint smile, and the man went
below, while, feeling chilly and depressed, and as if it would be wiser
to follow the fellow's example, he walked moodily forward, gazing over
the side in the direction of the island, and noticing now that there was
a low line of thick mist lying just over where the billows broke in foam
and produced the deep thunderous roar.

Cold, chilling, and repellent as it was, Jack could not repress a
shiver, and the feeling of dislike to the voyage, which had been rapidly
dying out in the new interests he felt, came back with renewed force.

"Why did we come?" he muttered.

As his eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom, he saw that the low
clouds seemed to be in bands above each other, increasing the strangely
forbidding aspect.

Just then there was a light step on the deck, and the mate came up.

"Morning," he said. "Here we are, you see."

"See? Yes; but what a place!"

"Eh?" cried the mate in surprise; "what, don't you like the look of it?"

"No; it is horrible. Just a black and grey mountain rising out of the
sea. Are we at anchor?"

"No; only lying-to, waiting for the full light, so as to find the
opening through the reef. There is no anchorage out here; I dare say
the lead would go down a mile."

"What, so close to the shore?"

"Oh yes. These volcanic mountains rise up suddenly--steeply, I mean,
from very great depths, and then the coral insects begin building upon
them, and form regular breakwaters of solid stone all round, and these
coral reefs rise just to the surface, and keep the waves from washing
the sides of the volcano away."

"What a pity!" said Jack mockingly. "I don't see any good in preserving
a great black-looking heap like that."

"Don't you?" said the mate, smiling, and looking back up at the gloomy
eminence.

"No, I don't," replied Jack, with a touch of early morning ill-humour in
his tones. "But isn't that nonsense? The sea could not wash away an
island like that."

"What! Why, give it time and it will wash away a continent.