ed Jack.

The captain smiled.

"It is some years since I was here, my lad. Then we rowed in, with the
lead being heaved all the time, and there was plenty of water for a ship
to sail in; but since then the coral insects may have been busy building
up walls or mushroom-shaped rocks, or a bit of a mountain top ready to
make a hole in our bottom, so we must feel our way. Going with them?"

For answer Jack sprang into the boat, and they pushed off, riding easily
over the swell caused by the breakers stretching away in a long line to
right and left; and as they rowed on, a man in the bows kept on heaving
the lead, and sounding to find deep water everywhere.

"Make a pretty loud din, don't they?" said the mate quietly, as, with a
feeling of awe beginning to increase as they neared the opening, Jack
sat watching the great rollers which came gliding in with the tide, and
then, as if enraged at the barrier to their progress, rose up foaming
and curved over to fall with a boom like thunder.

This increased as they drew nearer, the opening proving to be about a
hundred yards in width, and the water, which had seemed to be so smooth
and calm at a distance, being just outside one wild turmoil of eddy and
cross currents consequent upon the action of the breakers on either
side.

The boat danced about so at last, as they rowed slowly on to enable the
man in the bows to sound more frequently in this the entrance part, that
Jack was unable to keep back the question he felt ashamed to put.

Out it came.

"Is it safe for such a small boat as this to go through there, Mr
Bartlett?"

"If it were not I should row back," said the mate with a quiet smile.
"Oh, yes, we could go through far worse places than this. But look
there to the right; you see now why the captain said no boat could cross
the reef."

Jack could not forbear a shudder.

"The oars are nearly useless in that broken water, nearly all foam. The
men can get no grip. But here we could run in twice as fast if we
liked. Seems to be deep water. Capital channel. Not a suggestion of a
rock."

Then after contenting himself with letting the lead go down a few
fathoms in the deep water, the man began to keep to one level length of
ten fathoms, and this always went down without finding bottom till they
were well in the jaws of the reef, when all at once he cried the
depth--"By the mark nine," and repeated the announcement again and
again. Then it was eight, then se