bottom of the bay.
Stand boldly in until ye come abreast of the big rock at the mouth of
the bight, when clew up and furl everything. Follow the bight until ye
reach the lagoon, when ye may anchor annywhere not closer than a dozen
fadoms of the oiland. The gems'--oh, bedad, but that's another matther
intoirely," he hastily concluded.

"The directions seem explicit enough," said I; "and as no mention is
made of any dangers to be avoided I suppose there are none. All the
same, we shall need daylight for the job of taking the brig to the berth
mentioned, so I shall stand on until four bells in the first watch, and
then heave-to for the remainder of the night. At daylight we will fill
away again and work round to the nor'-west side of the island, when, if
the water happens to be clear, we shall perhaps be able to see the
bottom from aloft, and thus safely pilot the vessel to her anchorage. I
will con her myself from the fore-topmast crosstrees."

At four bells--ten o'clock--that night, the island showed through the
clear darkness upon the horizon as an irregularly-shaped pyramid, with a
peak nearly in the centre of it, rising to a height which I estimated at
about six or seven hundred feet. The island itself was at that time
some ten miles distant, and, measured from end to end, as we then looked
at it, I took it to be about four miles across. We hove the brig to,
and tried a cast first with the hand lead, and then with the deep-sea
lead, but got no bottom, at which I was by no means surprised, as I had
already heard that many of the islands in the Pacific--especially those
of coral formation--rise sheer from the very bottom of the sea.

At daybreak the next morning I was called by the steward, and, dressing,
went on deck, to find that the weather was as it had been all through
the preceding day, namely, a light breeze from the westward, with a
cloudless sky of crystalline clearness overhead, and a long, low
sluggish swell undulating athwart the gently-ruffled surface of the
ocean. The island now bore about four points on our weather quarter,
some sixteen miles distant; so we filled the main-topsail, got way upon
the ship, and hauled up to "full-and-by," when it was found that we
should just handsomely fetch clear of the most leeward point of the
land.

Viewed by the early daylight, the island presented a most attractive
appearance, rising against the background of sky as a picture painted in
an infinite variety