Page:The crater; or, Vulcan's peak.djvu/213

207 just at sunset. Next morning Mark saw the smoke of the Volcano, and stood for it. After making two stretches, he came up within a league of this spot, when he tacked and stood to the northward and eastward, Vulcan s Peak having been in plain view the entire day. As respects the vol cano, it was in a comparatively quiet state, though rum bling sounds were heard, and stones were cast into the air in considerable quantities, while the boat was nearest in. One thing, moreover, Mark ascertained, which greatly increased his confidence in the permanency of the changes that had lately occurred in the physical formation of all that region. He found himself in comparatively shoal water, when fully a league from this new crater. Shoal in a seaman s sense, though not in shallow water; the soundings being from fifteen to twenty fathoms, with a rocky bottom. Between the volcano and Vulcan s Peak it blew quite fresh, and Mark had a good occasion to ascertain the qua lities of the pinnace. A long, heavy swell, came rolling through the passage, which was near sixty miles in width, seemingly with a sweep that extended to the Southern Ocean. Notwithstanding all this, the little craft did won ders, struggling along in a way one would hardly have expected from so small a vessel. She made fully two knots headway in the worst of it, and in general her rate of sail- iug, close on a wind and under pretty short canvas, was about three. The night was very dark, and there was nothing to steer by but the wind, which gave some little embarrassment; but finding himself in much smoother water than he had been all the previous day, about mid night, our young man felt satisfied that he was under the lee of the island, and at no great distance from it. He made short tacks until daylight, when the huge mass hove up out of the departing darkness, within a mile of the boat. It only remained to run along the land for two or three miles, and to enter the haven of Snug Cove. Mark had been telling his companions what a secret place this haven was to conceal a vessel in, when he had a practical con firmation of the truth of his statement that caused him to be well laughed at. For ten minutes he could not discover the entrance himself, having neglected to take the proper