r miles long--as I had estimated it to be on the previous night--that
its general trend was from north-east to south-west, and that, if
surveyed and laid down upon the chart, it would present a somewhat flat
and irregular crescent-like plan. The barrier reef sprang from the
north-east extremity of the island, sweeping seaward on the arc of a
circle on its north-western side, and uniting again with the island at
its south-western extremity, forming a lagoon of the same length as the
island, and about three-quarters of a mile wide at its widest point.
The barrier reef, in fact, constituted a magnificent natural breakwater,
upon which the surf eternally broke in a loud, sullen roar of
everlasting thunder, while inside it the water was smooth as a mill
pond, shoaling very gradually from the reef to the shore of the island,
which consisted of a narrow beach of dazzling white sand, bordered by a
fringe of thousands of cocoa-nut palms, the long, plume-like branches of
which swayed gently in the soft, warm morning breeze. It was on this
side of the island, I concluded, that, if anywhere, traces of
inhabitants would be found, and I scanned the shore carefully and
anxiously through the ship's glass in search of such; but nothing of the
kind was to be seen; and I at length closed the telescope with a clash,
relieved to believe that, whatever anxieties there might be awaiting me
in the immediate future, trouble with hostile natives was not to be one
of them.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

THE ISLAND.

Standing on as we were going, we ratched past the island until it was
left a couple of miles astern of us, when we tacked ship, and brought
the land on our lee beam. Then, steering full and by, half an hour's
sailing sufficed to bring the summit of the hill to the required
compass-bearing of south-east, half-south, whereupon we bore dead away
for it, and, leaving O'Gorman in charge of the deck, I sprang into the
fore rigging and mounted to the crosstrees, from which commanding
elevation I intended to con the brig to her anchorage. Miss Onslow was
on deck by this time, drinking in, with eager, flashing eyes, the beauty
and brilliant colour of the picture presented by the emerald island in
its setting of sapphire sea; but as I sprang into the rigging I noticed
that her gaze followed me; and when I swung myself out to clamber over
the rim of the top--a performance which, to the eye of the landsman,
appears distinctly hazardous--she suddenl