bearing it along far swifter than the sculls could have driven it.
Sea-gulls screamed around them, the boat rocked and swayed. Dick
shouted with excitement, and Emmeline shut her eyes TIGHT.

Then, as though a door had been swiftly and silently closed, the sound
of the surf became suddenly less. The boat floated on an even keel; she
opened her eyes and found herself in Wonderland.

CHAPTER XII

THE LAKE OF AZURE

On either side lay a great sweep of waving blue water. Calm, almost as
a lake, sapphire here, and here with the tints of the aquamarine. Water
so clear that fathoms away below you could see the branching coral, the
schools of passing fish, and the shadows of the fish upon the spaces of
sand.

Before them the clear water washed the sands of a white beach, the
cocoa-palms waved and whispered in the breeze; and as the oarsman lay
on his oars to look a flock of bluebirds rose, as if suddenly freed
from the treetops, wheeled, and passed soundless, like a wreath of
smoke, over the tree-tops of the higher land beyond.

"Look!" shouted Dick, who had his nose over the of the boat. "Look at
the FISH!"

"Mr Button," cried Emmeline, "where are we?"

"Bedad, I dunno; but we might be in a worse place, I'm thinkin',"
replied the old man, sweeping his eyes over the blue and tranquil
lagoon, from the barrier reef to the happy shore.

On either side of the broad beach before them the cocoa-nut trees came
down like two regiments, and bending gazed at their own reflections in
the lagoon. Beyond lay waving chapparel, where cocoa-palms and
breadfruit trees intermixed with the mammee apple and the tendrils of
the wild vine. On one of the piers of coral at the break of the reef
stood a single cocoa-palm; bending with a slight curve, it, too, seemed
seeking its reflection in the waving water.

But the soul of it all, the indescribable thing about this picture of
mirrored palm trees, blue lagoon, coral reef and sky, was the light.

Away at sea the light was blinding, dazzling, cruel. Away at sea it had
nothing to focus itself upon, nothing to exhibit but infinite spaces of
blue water and desolation.

Here it made the air a crystal, through which the gazer saw the
loveliness of the land and reef, the green of palm, the white of coral,
the wheeling gulls, the blue lagoon, all sharply outlined--burning,
coloured, arrogant, yet tender--heart-breakingly beautiful, for the
spirit of eternal morning was here, eternal hap