ore for
her. She was going straight for the huge black rocks.

The boat's crew rowed in for observations. Even before they returned to
report, the anxious officers on board the vessel had made out a narrow
fissure in the rocky coast line. They assumed that it was the mouth of
a small river. The Second Engineer brought back the astonishing
information that this opening in the coast was the gateway to a channel
that in his judgment split the island into two distinct sections. That
it was not the mouth of a river was made clear by the presence of a
current so strong that his men had to exert themselves to the utmost to
prevent the boat being literally sucked into the channel by the powerful
tide, which apparently was at its full. This opening,--the water rushed
into it so swiftly that he was satisfied it developed into a gorge
farther back from the coast,--was approximately two hundred yards wide,
flanked on either side by low lying, formidable bastions of rock. The
water was not more than fifty feet deep off the entrance to the channel.

Gradually the prow of the Doraine swung around and pointed straight for
the cleft in the shore. The ship, two miles out, had responded to
the insidious pressure of the current and was being drawn toward the
rocks,--at first so slowly that there was scarcely a ripple off her
bows; then, as she lumbered onward, she began to turn over the water as
a ploughshare turns over the land.

At precisely six o'clock she slid between the rocky portals and entered
a canal so straight and true that it might have been drilled and blasted
out of the earth under the direction of the most skilful engineers in
the world.

Soundings were hastily taken. Discovering that the water was not deep
enough even at high tide to submerge the vessel when the inevitable came
to pass and she sank to the bottom, Captain Trigger renewed his efforts
to release the anchor chains, which had been caught and jammed in the
wreckage. He realized the vital necessity for checking the Doraine in
her flight before she accomplished the miracle of passing unhindered
through the channel and out into the open sea beyond. The swiftness of
the current indicated plainly enough that this natural canal was of no
great length.

The ship slid on between the tree lined banks. The trees were of the
temperate zone, with spreading limbs, thick foliage and hardy trunks.
There were no palms visible, but in the rarely occurring open spaces
a larg