e break in the long, sweeping circle of foam; and,
once in still water, I was able from my perch to see the sandy bottom as
clearly as though it had been bare of water, every tiny fish and every
fragment of weed that passed within a hundred feet of us being perfectly
visible.

Once fairly through the opening in the reef and into the basin, we
hauled up to south a quarter west, which course brought our jib-boom
pointing to what then had the appearance of the mouth of an
insignificant stream. But as we slid athwart the basin the opening
assumed an appearance of increasingly greater importance, until when
within half a mile of it I saw that it was really the comparatively
narrow entrance of a fairly spacious little bay, or loch, penetrating
for some distance into the land. Soon afterwards the big rock mentioned
in O'Gorman's document separated itself from the background of bush and
trees with which it had hitherto been merged, and proclaimed itself as
an obelisk-like monolith of basalt rearing its apex to a height of some
ninety feet above the water level. When fairly abreast of this the
canvas was clewed up, and the brig slid into the loch with the way that
she had on her. This loch, or channel, wound gradually round for a
length of about a cable, and then widened into a nearly circular lagoon
about half a mile in diameter, in the very centre of which stood a small
islet, thickly overgrown with trees and dense jungle. Keeping this
islet on our starboard beam, at a distance of some twenty fathoms, we
slowly circled round it until it was immediately between us and the
outlet to the larger lagoon, when we let go our anchor in four fathoms,
amid the exultant cheers of the men, who thus found themselves
triumphantly at their destination. That we actually had found the
identical island referred to in O'Gorman's paper there could be no
shadow of doubt, since the landmarks mentioned agreed perfectly; and my
strongest emotion was one of surprise that an island of such dimensions
should thus far have escaped the notice of the hydrographers.

All hands now went to breakfast; and when the men again turned to, upon
the conclusion of their meal, their first act was to swarm aloft and
unbend the whole of the canvas, from the royals down--a proceeding which
seemed to confirm my previous surmise that they intended their sojourn
upon the island to be of some duration. This task occupied them the
entire morning; but when they knocke