good time. But you know how quickly the full day comes here
near the equator. Keep looking."

Jack wanted no telling, and for the next few minutes, with a curious
sense of awe, wonder, and delight, he stood watching the line of light
descending and making the beauties of the volcanic island start out of
the gloom. The bands of cloud which hung round the sharp slope became
roseate, golden, orange, and purple, and soon after the lad was gazing
below the barren, glowing rocks at patches of golden green, then at the
beginning of billows and deep valleys running down, the former of
wonderful shades of green, the latter of deep dark velvety purple,
across which silvery films of vapour were floating.

And still the light came down, casting wonderful shadows, setting
towering pyramidical trees blazing as it were; and then all at once the
boy could have believed that he was gazing where there was a gash of
liquid fire pouring down into a dark valley, flashing and coruscating
till it disappeared.

And still lower and lower, with wonderful rapidity now, as the great
glowing disk was seen to rise above the edge of the sea, till the whole
island was ablaze in the morning sunshine, and the gloomy, forbidding
mass was one glorious picture of tropic beauty. Forests grouped
themselves about the lower mountain slopes, lovely park-like stretches
could be seen lower still, and beneath lower groves of palm-like trees a
band of golden sand. Nearer still, thin lines of cocoa palms edging
what appeared to be a lake of the purest blue, edged in turn with a
sparkling line of foam, where the billows seemed to be eternally
fretting to get over the surrounding reef and plunge themselves into the
placid, perfectly calm lagoon.

Lastly there was the dark sea, now lit up into a gleaming plain of
gently heaving waves; all being shot as it were with purple, where again
patches of rippled damascened silver flashed in the opening of a new
day.

"It is too beautiful," muttered the boy to himself. "It seems almost as
if it hurt and made one sad. Oh," he said aloud, "and I never called
him up to see."

"Eh, what's that?" said Sir John. "Think we were sleeping through all
this? Oh no! What a glorious sunrise, my boy."

"Glorious," cried the doctor, grasping the boy's arm. "I didn't think
Nature could be so grand. Here, I don't feel as if I could wait for
breakfast. Oh, Jack, my lad, what times we're going to have out there."

"Well, ge