ey
are until something comes along and tows them into Havana."

At this moment the dinner gong sounded, and the little party retired
below.

When Jack went up on deck next morning, as the ship's bell was striking
eight, he saw that the yacht was running along, with her head to the
eastward, within about half a mile of some low land, dotted with trees,
which stretched ahead and astern of her for several miles on their port
hand, terminating at each extremity in a low headland. Inland, at a
distance of about twenty-five miles, rose a long range of hills, or low
mountains, which appeared to rise to a height of something between two
thousand and three thousand feet.

"Good-morning, Jack!" cheerily exclaimed the skipper, as Singleton ran
up the ladder on to the top of the deck-house. "Glorious morning, isn't
it? But it is going to be roasting hot a little later on; the sun has a
sting already, in spite of this piping easterly breeze."

"Yes," agreed Jack. "And if it is hot here, what must it be ashore?
But where are we now, Skipper?"

"Pretty close to our destination, I'm thankful to say," answered Milsom.
"That point astern is Cape Corrientes, the point ahead is Mangle Point,
four miles beyond which is Cape Frances, where we shall run in upon the
Bank, or shoal, which extends eastward for something like one hundred
and sixty miles to the end of the Jardinillos. Those hills, inland
there, are called the Organ Mountains; though, to my mind, the name is
much too grandiloquent for such insignificant elevations. I hope that
pilot chap who is to take us into the lagoon will be keeping a bright
lookout for us; I have just been having a squint at the chart, and I
tell you, Jack, that I don't half like the idea of taking this little
beauty in over that precious Bank, where it would be the easiest thing
in the world to rip the bottom out of her on some unsuspected upstanding
coral snag. I mean to go dead slow all the while that we are on that
Bank, I can tell you, although I happen to know the greater part of it
as well as I know my own back garden. And it is perhaps because I know
it so well that I like it so little. Ah!"--as the yacht swung round the
point which she had been approaching, and opened out for another about
four miles farther on--"there is Cape Frances; and there is the Bank
showing up plainly enough. That is it, where the colour of the water
changes from dark blue to almost white. And now it is time fo