that, while in any case I am going to be as good as my word, if you
treat me like a sensible person I shall probably be a trifle better."

For ten seconds, maybe, the pair looked one another in the eyes; then
the Captain bowed once more, and apparently this invited her to step
forward with him to the bows, where they halted and stood conning the
coast, the Captain through his spyglass.

As they left us, Plinny and I moved to the waist of the ship, where
we paused by consent, and I resumed my breakfast, munching it as I
leaned against the port bulwarks. We were now rapidly opening Long
Bay (as the chart called it), a deep recess running out squarely at
either extremity, the bight of it crossed by a beach, and a line of
tumbling breakers, that extended for close upon three miles.
Above the beach a forest of tall trees, in height and colour at once
distinguishable from the thick bush we had hitherto been passing,
screened the bases of a range of hills which obviously formed the
backbone of the island; and as the whole bay crept into view we
discerned in the north (or, to be accurate, N.N.E.) corner of this
long recess a marshy valley dividing the scrub from the forest.
The mouth of this valley, where it widened out upon the beach,
measured at least half a mile across. The chart marked it as Misery
Swamp, and indicated a river there. We could detect none, or, at any
rate, no river entrance. If river there were, doubtless it emptied
its waters through the fringe of grey-green weeds, and dispersed over
the flat-looking foreshore; but even at two miles' distance it looked
to be a dismal, fever-haunted spot.

By contrast, the noble range of woodland to southward of it and the
rocky peaks that rose in delicate shadow above the tree-tops were
beautiful as a dream, even to eyes fresh from the forest scenery of
Jamaica; and while Plinny leant with me against the bulwarks, I felt
that in the silence immortal verse was shaping itself, which it did
after a while to this effect--

"Arrived o'er the limitless ocean
In 16 degrees of N. latitude,
Our lips were attuned to devotion,
Our spirits uplifted in gratitude.

"Our hearts with poetic afflatus
Took wing and impulsively soared
As the lead-line (a quaint apparatus)
Reported the depth overboard.

"Oh, oft had I dream'd of the tropics--
But never to see them in person--
So full of remarkable topics