e in such good fortune as might attend their labours.

The atoll was sighted a little after ten o'clock in the morning, and by
eleven o'clock the ship had safely entered the lagoon, and come to
anchor as nearly as possible in its centre. The islet--which, as von
Schalckenberg's book had stated, was little more than a mere rock--was
of coral formation, and appeared to be merely a volcanic or seismic
upheaval of one small portion of the oval ring of coral that formed the
lagoon. Looked at broadside-on, so to speak, it bore some resemblance
in appearance to a whale asleep on the water. Sand had washed up and
become lodged among the inequalities of the rock-surface, and the
deposits of birds had converted this into soil that, poor as it looked,
sufficed to nourish a small clump of coconut palms that reared
themselves from the highest point of the islet, which rose some thirty
feet above the surface of the ocean. The shoal upon which the
oyster-bed was reputed to exist lay two miles to the westward of the
islet, and had been sighted from the deck of the _Flying Fish_ shortly
before her arrival in the lagoon, its position being indicated by a very
distinct discoloration of the water.

The ship having been moored, the two boats were lowered into the water,
and the party made an excursion to the islet, to view the place, and
fill in the interval before luncheon. The islet was so small, however,
and so absolutely devoid of interest, that half an hour sufficed the
party to become perfectly acquainted with it; but they were repaid for
their trouble by the discovery of a long, shallow, saucer-like
depression, with a smooth bottom, that offered perfectly ideal
facilities for the deposit of the oysters while undergoing the process
of decomposition, which is the preliminary to the finding of such pearls
as they may contain. There was no doubt that this would render the
island and its immediate vicinity almost intolerably offensive to the
olfactory nerves; but as the lagoon was to windward of the islet, and
the ship was moored a mile and a half away from it, it was believed that
her occupants would suffer no inconvenience from that source.

Luncheon over, two small nets, each with a sufficient length of rope to
reach from the surface to the sea-bottom on the shoal, together with a
couple of shovels and two rope ladders, were got out and put into the
boats, while Mildmay and the professor arrayed themselves in their
diving-suits