e forward deck. Birds were singing and
chattering in the trees that lined the shore; down at the water's edge,
like sentinels on duty, with an eye always upon the strange, gigantic
intruder, strutted a number of stately, bright-plumaged birds of the
flamingo variety--(doubtless they were flamingoes); the blue surface of
the basin was sprinkled with the myriad white, gleaming backs of winged
fishermen, diving, flapping, swirling; on high, far above the hills,
soared two or three huge birds with wings outspread and rigid, monarchs
of all that they surveyed. The stowaway leaned on the port rail and
fixed his gaze upon the crest of the severed hill, apparently the
tallest of the half dozen or so that were visible from his position.

With powerful glasses he studied the wooded slope. This hill was
probably twelve or fourteen hundred feet high. He thought of it as a
hill, for he had lived long in the heart of the towering Andes. Behind
him lay the belt of woodland that separated the basin from the open
sea, a scant league away. The cleft through the hill lay almost directly
ahead. It's walls apparently were perpendicular; a hundred feet or
less from the pinnacle, the opening spread out considerably, indicating
landslides at some remote period, the natural sloughing off of earth
and stone in the formation of this narrow, unnatural passage through
the very centre of the little mountain. For at least a thousand feet,
however, the sides of the passage rose as straight as a wall. That the
mountain was of solid rock could not be doubted after a single glance at
those sturdy, unflinching walls, black and sheer.

"Well, what do you make of it?" inquired a voice at his elbow. He turned
to find Mr. Mott standing beside him.

"Earthquake," he replied. "Thousands of years ago, of course. Split the
island completely in two."

"Sounds plausible," mused the First Officer. "But if that is the case,
how do you account for the shallowness of the water in the passage and
out here in the basin? An earthquake violent enough to split that hill
would make a crack in the earth a thousand fathoms deep."

"I have an idea that if we took soundings in this basin we'd find a
section twenty or thirty feet wide in the centre of it where we couldn't
touch bottom. The same would be true of the passage if we plumbed the
middle. When we came through it the ship scraped bottom time and again.
As a matter of fact,--the way I figure it out,--she was simply bu