beautiful sand, and its depth of
water, on sounding, Mark found was uniformly about eight fathoms. A more
safe or convenient basin for the anchorage of ships could not have been
formed by the art of man, had there been an entrance to it, and any
inducement for them to come there.

Mark had beaten about 'Oval Harbour,' as he named the place, for half
an hour, before he was struck by the circumstance that the even
character of its surface appeared to be a little disturbed by a slight
undulation which seemed to come from its north-eastern extremity.
Tacking the Bridget, he stood in that direction, and on reaching the
place, found that there was a passage through the rock of about a
hundred yards in width. The wind permitting, the boat shot through this
passage, and was immediately heaving and setting in the long swells of
the open ocean. At first Mark was startled by the roar of the waves that
plunged into the caverns of the rocks, and trembled lest his boat might
be hove up against that hard and iron-bound coast, where one toss would
shatter his little craft into splinters. Too steady a seaman, however,
to abandon his object unnecessarily, he stood on, and soon found he
could weather the rocks under his lee, tacking in time. After two or
three short stretches were made, Mark found himself half a mile to
windward of a long line, or coast, of dark rock, that rose from twenty
to twenty-five feet above the level of the water, and beyond all
question in the open ocean. He hove-to to sound, and let forty fathoms
of line out without reaching bottom. But everywhere to leeward of him
was land, or rock; while everywhere to windward, as well as ahead and
astern, it was clear water. This, then, was the eastern limit of the old
shoals, now converted into dry land. Here the Rancocus had, unknown to
her officers, first run into the midst of these shoals, by which she had
ever since been environed.

It was not easy to compute the precise distance from the outlet or inlet
of Oval Harbour, to the crater. Mark thought it might be five-and-twenty
miles, in a straight line, judging equally by the eye, and the time he
had been in running it. The Summit was not to be seen, however, any more
than the masts of the ship; though the distant Peak, and the column of
dark smoke, remained in sight, as eternal land-marks. The young man
might have been an hour in the open sea, gradually hauling off the land,
in order to keep clear of the coast, when he