ara
sat on the thwart, tugging like mad, now cricking his neck almost to
stare up at the cliff, and now grinning down at me in silly triumph.

"With that I caught at the meaning of the sound in my ears.
'You infernal fool!' I shouted, staggering up and making to snatch the
paddle from him. 'Get her nose round to it and back her!' For it was
the noise of breaking water.

"But I was too late. Our boat, I must tell you, was a sort of Dutch
pram, about twelve feet long and narrowing at the bows, which stood well
out of water; handy enough for beaching, but not to be taken through
breakers, by reason of its sitting low in the stern. O'Hara, as I
yelled at him, pulled his starboard paddle and brought her (for these
prams spin round easily) almost broadside on to a tall comber. As we
slid up the side of it and hung there, I had a glimpse of a steep clean
fissure straight through the wall of rock ahead; and in that instant
O'Hara sprawled his arms and toppled overboard. The boat and I went by
him with a rush. I saw a hand and wrist lifted above the foam, but when
I looked back for them they were gone--gone as I shot over the bar and
through the cleft into smooth water. I shouted and pulled back to the
edge of the breakers; but he was gone, and I never saw him again.

"I suppose it was ten minutes before I took heart to look about me.
I was floating on a lake of the bluest water I ever set eyes on, and as
calm as a pond except by the entrance where the spent waves, after
tumbling over the bar, spread themselves in long ripples, widening and
widening until the edge of them melted and they were gone. The banks of
the lake rose sheer from its edge, or so steeply that I saw no way of
climbing them--walls you might call them, a good hundred feet high, and
widening gradually towards the top, but in a circle as regular as ever
you could draw with a pair of compasses. Any fool could see what had
happened--that here was the crater of a dead volcano, one side of which
had been broken into by the sea; but the beauty of it, sir, coming on
top of my weakness, fairly made me cry. For the walls at the top were
fringed with palms and jungle trees, and hung with creepers like
curtains that trailed over the face of the cliff and down among the
ferns by the shore. I leaned over the boat and stared into the water.
It was clear, clear--you've no notion how clear; but no bottom could I
see. It seemed to sink right through and into the