on the Peak, I think myself; but
we must fish, get our salt, and obtain most of our vegetables from the
Reef."

"Oh! that Reef, that Reef--how long will it be, Mark, before we see it?"

The enamoured young husband laughed, and kissed his charming wife, and
told her to restrain her impatience. Several hours must elapse before
they could even come in sight of the rocks. These hours did pass, and
with the occurrence of no event worthy of being recorded. The Trades
usually blew fresh in that quarter of the ocean, but it was seldom that
they brought tempests. Occasionally squalls did occur, it is true; but a
prudent and experienced mariner could ordinarily guard against their
consequences, while the hurricane seldom failed, like most other great
physical phenomena, to have its precursors, that were easily seen and
understood. On the present occasion, the boat ran across the passage in
very good time, making the crater in about five hours, and the ship's
masts in six. Mark made a good land-fall coming in to leeward of the
cape, or low promontory already mentioned--Cape South he called
it--while there still remained several hours of day. Bridget was greatly
struck with the vast difference she could not help finding between the
appearance of these low, dark, and so often naked rocks, and that of the
Eden she had just left. Tears came into her eyes, as she pictured her
husband a solitary wanderer over these wastes, with no water, even, but
that which fell from the clouds, or which came from the casks of the
ship. When, however, she gave utterance to this feeling, one so natural
to her situation, Mark told her to have patience until they reached the
crater, when she would see that he had possessed a variety of blessings,
for which he had every reason to be grateful to God.

There was no difficulty in getting into the proper channel, when the
boat fairly flew along the rocks that lined the passages. So long as she
was in rough water, the sails of so small a craft were necessarily
becalmed a good deal of the time; but, now that there was nothing to
intercept the breeze, she caught it all, and made the most of it. To
Mark's surprise, as they passed the Prairie, he saw all of his swine on
it, now, including two half-unconsumed litters of well-grown pigs, some
seventeen in number. These animals had actually found their way along
the rocks, a distance of at least twenty miles from home, and by the
crooked path they had taken, probab