ss I did not intend to abandon the chase until I had fully
satisfied myself that the fugitives had made good their escape;
therefore we continued to stand on, hour after hour, until, by the time
that the sun was within half an hour of his setting, we had brought the
strange island "hull-up" on the horizon ahead, and had satisfied
ourselves that there was no canoe between it and us.

It was a considerably more extensive island than our own, being about
twenty miles long from north to south, somewhat rugged of surface, with
plenty of trees dotted about here and there, and wide patches of cleared
ground in between, upon which crops of various kinds seemed to be
growing. It rose rather steeply from the water's surface to a height of
some fifty or sixty feet, and then went sweeping grandly away to right
and left in a constantly steepening slope, which culminated in a lofty,
isolated peak occupying practically the centre of the island.

When we had run in close enough to note all these details I brought the
wind over the catamaran's port quarter and headed her so as to pass to
the southward of the island, being determined, now that I had come so
far, to sail right round it and see as much as I could of it.

The sun was just dipping beneath the horizon when, having brought the
most southerly extremity of the island square upon our starboard beam,
some two miles distant, we shifted our helm, and, jibing over, brought
the wind on our starboard quarter, hauling up to the northward and
westward to skirt the lee side of the island. This course soon brought
us in under the lee of the land and into smooth water, when, maintaining
an offing of about two miles, that we might not be becalmed and so
invite the risk of capture by a dash of canoes from the shore, we
quietly coasted along the lee side of the island, which we now
discovered to be roughly crescent-shaped in plan, with a deep
indentation on the west side protected by a barrier reef, and thus
forming a magnificent natural harbour, some eight miles long from north
to south by about six miles wide from east to west. A fine sandy beach
skirted the whole margin of this indentation, scattered along which, at
brief intervals, we caught sight of some ten or twelve little villages
of palm-leaf huts nestling in the midst of luxuriant coconut groves, the
land behind them soaring steeply away to the summit of the cone. And
abreast of each village the beach was dotted with canoes, som