esses, and resists the eternal attack of the sea
by vital force, especially when we think of the extent of some of these
lagoon islands or atolls, whose existences are an eternal battle with
the waves.

Unlike the island of this story (which is an island surrounded by a
barrier reef of coral surrounding a space of sea--the lagoon), the reef
forms the island. The reef may be grown over by trees, or it may be
perfectly destitute of important vegetation, or it may be crusted with
islets. Some islets may exist within the lagoon, but as often as not it
is just a great empty lake floored with sand and coral, peopled with
life different to the life of the outside ocean, protected from the
waves, and reflecting the sky like a mirror.

When we remember that the atoll is a living thing, an organic whole, as
full of life, though not so highly organised, as a tortoise, the
meanest imagination must be struck with the immensity of one of the
structures.

Vliegen atoll in the Low Archipelago, measured from lagoon edge to
lagoon edge, is sixty miles long by twenty miles broad, at its broadest
part. In the Marshall Archipelago, Rimsky Korsacoff is fifty-four miles
long and twenty miles broad; and Rimsky Korsacoff is a living thing,
secreting, excreting, and growing more highly organised than the
cocoa-nut trees that grow upon its back, or the blossoms that powder
the hotoo trees in its groves.

The story of coral is the story of a world, and the longest chapter in
that story concerns itself with coral's infinite variety and form.

Out on the margin of the reef where Dick was spearing fish, you might
have seen a peach-blossom-coloured lichen on the rock. This lichen was
a form of coral. Coral growing upon coral, and in the pools at the edge
of the surf branching corals also of the colour of a peach-bloom.

Within a hundred yards of where Emmeline was sitting, the pools
contained corals of all colours, from lake-red to pure white, and the
lagoon behind her--corals of the quaintest and strangest forms.

Dick had speared several fish, and had left them lying on the reef to
be picked up later on. Tired of killing, he was now wandering along,
examining the various living things he came across.

Huge slugs inhabited the reef, slugs as big as parsnips, and somewhat
of the same shape; they were a species of Bech de mer. Globeshaped
jelly-fish as big as oranges, great cuttlefish bones flat and shining
and white, shark's teeth, spines o