entire
island lay stretched out at our feet like a map, with mile after mile of
the blue, foam-flecked ocean reaching far away to the horizon on every
hand, while away in the south-western quarter, a hundred miles distant
perhaps, there appeared a faint film of misty blue which indicated the
presence of other land. But this last was much too distant to interest
us in any way; it was our own particular domain that absorbed all our
attention, and the first thing that we observed about it was that its
length ran practically east and west. It was of very irregular shape,
the most graphic way of describing it being, perhaps, to say that in
general outline it somewhat resembled a rather acute-angled triangle,
with two large pieces bitten out of it near the base, one bite having
been taken out of the north side, while the other and larger had removed
the south-west angle and formed the bay in which lay the wreck. The
acute angle pointed toward the east, and the sides of the triangle were
much twisted and broken. The mountain, upon the summit of which we
stood, occupied the middle of the eastern half of the island, and proved
to be, as we had anticipated, the crater of an apparently extinct
volcano. The interior of the crater was elliptical in shape, about a
mile long by half a mile wide, and was a funnel-like opening about five
thousand feet deep, with practically perpendicular sides. It resembled,
as much as anything, an enormous well, for there was water at the bottom
of it, though probably of no great depth. Also at the bottom, all round
the edge of the water and for some distance up the sides, there were
enormous quantities of what we judged to be sulphur.

The top edge of the crater, which from below presented the appearance of
a flat-topped hill, was about thirty feet wide and tolerably level; we
therefore had no difficulty in walking right round it, and so obtaining
a complete view of the entire island, which was everywhere covered with
verdure, save immediately round the base of the volcano. But although
the outline of the island was very irregular, there were only two
indentations worthy of the name of bays in it, namely, the one in which
the wreck lay, and which we at once decided to name South-west Bay, and
another at the north-west extremity of the island, which we named North
Bay. These two bays were the only portions of the coastline possessing
anything in the nature of a beach; and, that fact once establ