y clasped her hands upon her
breast, as though in terror for my safety. The action was trifling
enough, perhaps, yet I was disposed to regard it as not quite
insignificant, since I had often stood by her side as she had watched--
with evidently no stronger emotion than amusement--others perform the
same feat.

Upon reaching my perch I found that we were still in deep water, no sign
whatever of the bottom being visible through the depths of the
exquisitely beautiful, clear, crystalline blue; but ahead, at the very
fringe of the breakers that were dashing themselves into diamond and
pearl-white spray upon the stubborn rampart of the barrier reef, there
was a change of colour that told of shoaling depths; and a qualm of
anxiety swept over me as I pictured to myself what would probably happen
if, sweeping in before the wind as we were, we should plunge into that
belt of seething white water, and find that there was not depth enough
to float us. For a few minutes I was full of anxiety; but presently, as
we slid nearer and nearer still to the reef, I detected the opening--a
narrow passage barely wide enough, apparently, for a boat to traverse,
but of unbroken water, merely flecked here and there with the froth of
the boil on either hand. We were running as straight for it as though
it had been in sight for an hour; and as we were following the
directions given in O'Gorman's paper, this fact seemed to point to an
accurate knowledge of the place on the part of the author of those
directions; which assumption I fervently hoped would be confirmed in
every particular.

As we bore rapidly down upon the reef, the passage through it gradually
assumed its true proportion of width, and I saw that there was ample
room to allow of the passage, not only of the brig, but of a couple of
line-of-battle ships abreast. The island had the appearance of being
simply the topmost ridge of a mountain rising with a tolerably even
continuous slope from the bottom of the sea; and the barrier reef was
merely an excrescence or wall of coral built on to one side of it, and
founded at a depth of ten fathoms below the surface of the ocean, as our
lead presently told us. The basin thus formed had, during the course of
ages, become partially filled with sand, forming a beautifully smooth,
and even white floor, gradually sloping upward toward the surface from
the reef to the shore of the island. All this was quite plain to me as
we drove in through th