For this reason he would have approached its shores with greater
caution; and he was in the act of enforcing this upon his companions,
when his intention was entirely frustrated by the joyous _huzza_ uttered
by Snowball; echoed by little William; and chorussed by the childish,
feminine voice of Lilly Lalee.

The sailor's caution would have come too late,--even had it been
necessary to the safety of the _Catamaran's_ crew. Fortunately it was
not: for that imprudent shout produced an effect which at once changed
the current of the thoughts, not only of Ben Brace, but of those who had
given utterance to it.

Their united voices, pealing across the tranquil bosom of the deep,
caused a sudden change in the appearance of the island; or rather among
the people who inhabited it. If human beings, they must be of a strange
race,--very strange indeed,--to have been furnished with wings! How
otherwise could they have forsaken their footing on _terra firma_,--if
the island was such,--and soared upward into the air, which one and all
of them did, on hearing that shout from the _Catamaran_?

There was not much speculation on this point on the part of the
_Catamaran's_ crew. Whatever doubts may have been engendered as to the
nature of the island, there could be no longer any about the character
of its inhabitants.

"Dey am birds!" suggested the Coromantee; "nuffin more and nuffin less
dan birds!"

"You're right, Snowy," assented the sailor. "They be birds; and all the
better they be so. Yes; they're birds, for sartin. I can tell the cut
o' some o' their jibs. I see frigates, an' a man-o'-war's-man, an'
boobies among 'em; and I reckon Old Mother Carey has a brood o' her
chickens there. They be all sizes, as ye see."

It was no more a matter of conjecture, as to what kind of creatures
inhabited the island. The forms that had been mystifying the crew of
the _Catamaran_, though of the biped class, were no longer to be
regarded as human beings, or even creatures of the earth. They had
declared themselves denizens of the air; and, startled by the shouts
that had reached them,--to them, no doubt, sounds strange, and never
before heard,--they had sought security in an element into which there
was no fear of being followed by their enemies, either of the earth or
the water.

CHAPTER FIFTY EIGHT.

VERY LIKE A WHALE.

Though the birds by their flight had dissolved one half of the
speculative theory which the crew of th