he sea.
But there proved too many hunters for the game. The fleet broke up, and
went their separate ways out of sight, leaving my own ship and two trim
gentlemen of London. These last, finding no luck either, likewise
vanished; and Lee Bay, with all its appurtenances, and without a rival,
devolved to us.

The way of cruising here is this. You keep hovering about the entrance
of the bay, in one beat and out the next. But at times--not always, as
in other parts of the group--a racehorse of a current sweeps right
across its mouth. So, with all sails set, you carefully ply your tacks.
How often, standing at the foremast head at sunrise, with our patient
prow pointed in between these isles, did I gaze upon that land, not of
cakes, but of clinkers, not of streams of sparkling water, but arrested
torrents of tormented lava.

As the ship runs in from the open sea, Narborough presents its side in
one dark craggy mass, soaring up some five or six thousand feet, at
which point it hoods itself in heavy clouds, whose lowest level fold is
as clearly defined against the rocks as the snow-line against the Andes.
There is dire mischief going on in that upper dark. There toil the
demons of fire, who, at intervals, irradiate the nights with a strange
spectral illumination for miles and miles around, but unaccompanied by
any further demonstration; or else, suddenly announce themselves by
terrific concussions, and the full drama of a volcanic eruption. The
blacker that cloud by day, the more may you look for light by night.
Often whalemen have found themselves cruising nigh that burning mountain
when all aglow with a ball-room blaze. Or, rather, glass-works, you may
call this same vitreous isle of Narborough, with its tall
chimney-stacks.

Where we still stand, here on Rodondo, we cannot see all the other
isles, but it is a good place from which to point out where they lie.
Yonder, though, to the E.N.E., I mark a distant dusky ridge. It is
Abington Isle, one of the most northerly of the group; so solitary,
remote, and blank, it looks like No-Man's Land seen off our northern
shore. I doubt whether two human beings ever touched upon that spot. So
far as yon Abington Isle is concerned, Adam and his billions of
posterity remain uncreated.

Ranging south of Abington, and quite out of sight behind the long spine
of Albemarle, lies James's Isle, so called by the early Buccaneers after
the luckless Stuart, Duke of York. Observe here, by the wa