height of perhaps sixty or seventy feet. This was the island of West
Caycos, the most westerly of the cays on the bank, and ten minutes later
we were under its lee and within less than a cable's length from the
beach.

But what a change had taken place in the aspect of sea and sky during
those ten minutes! As we stood, spellbound, watching the gorgeous
changes of colour that were taking place along the eastern horizon, a
broad ray of white light, the edges slightly tinged with violet,
suddenly shot vertically aloft from the horizon, piercing the
cloud-masses as though with the thrust of a spear; and as though there
had been magic in the touch those cloud-masses at once began to break up
and melt away, assuming, ere they vanished, every conceivable tint of
the rainbow, from the deepest and richest hue of purple, through crimson
and scarlet, to purest molten gold. And while these wonderful changes
of colour were taking place, shaft after shaft of living, quivering
light flashed into the sky, radiating like the spokes of a wheel against
the warm primrose tints of the horizon--merging by imperceptible degrees
into the pure, delicate azure of the sky revealed by the breaking up and
dissolution of the clouds--to be followed, a few seconds later, by the
appearance above the horizon of a great rim of blazing, palpitating
golden fire, the level rays from which shot along the tumbling surface
of the ocean, splashing it with a million scintillating points of
dazzling light, as the crests of the tiny wavelets curled over and broke
under the whipping of the freshening breeze. Then, while we still stood
watching, a gauzy veil of rain--"the pride of the morning"--swept down
upon us, blotting out the glories of the sunrise for a brief minute or
two, then driving away to leeward, leaving our sails and deck dark with
wet, and revealing the sun, now fully risen, and the sky clear and pure
to windward.

With the freshening of the breeze we rapidly brought West Caycos first
abeam and then on our weather quarter, while the high land of
Providenciales grew upon the weather-bow. Here we were very nearly
getting into an exceedingly awkward scrape, for while I went below to
prepare for my morning bath under the head-pump, after witnessing the
magnificent sunrise that I have endeavoured to describe, the wind
suddenly fell light and died away; and then, while I was dressing after
my bath, the sea-breeze suddenly sprang up, blowing half a ga