"Lieutenant Collins," said Jones, in a low voice, "do you mean to steer for that island, sir?" "Yes," I said, "certainly, Mr Jones--I shall see this matter out, whatever the upshot may be!" "Then keep on, sir," said he, firmly, "keep in the white water--'tis your only plan to near it safely, sir!" This I didn't well understand; but, by Jove! there was so much out of the common way hereabouts, that I had made up my mind to follow his advice. Another hail from aloft, at length--"Something black on our lee-bow, sir--right in the eye of the white it is, sir!" We were now running fast down in the direction where there was least possibility of seeing ahead at all, although, in fact, the little moonshine we had evidently began to make this puzzling hue of the surface less distinct--turning it of a queer ashy drab, more and more like the brown we noticed by day-time; while the light seemed as it were to scoop out the hollow of the sky aloft, when a dark spot or two could be observed from the deck, dotting the milky space over one bow--you couldn't say whether in the air or the water, as they hung blackening and growing together before us through below the foot of the jib. Larger and larger it loomed as we stood before the breeze, till there was no doubt we had the bulk of a small low island not far to windward of us, a couple of points or thereabouts on our larboard bow when she fell off a little--lying with the ragged outline of it rising to a top near one end, its shape stretched black and distinct in the midst of the pale sea; while the white water was to be seen taking close along the edge of the island, showing every rock and point of it in the shadow from the moon, till it seemed to turn away all of a sudden like a current into the broad dreamy glimmer that still lay south-eastward. On the other side of the island you saw the dark sea-ripples flickering to the faint moonlight, and some two or three more patches of flat land just tipping the horizon, with the thin cocoa-nut trees on them like reeds against the stars and the dusk; while the one nearest us was sufficiently marked out to have saved me the trouble even of the look I gave Jones, which he answered by another. "You have seven or eight fathoms water here, sir," added he; "and as soon as she rounds the point yonder, we can shoal it by degrees to any anchorage you like, as long as we keep in the white water--but we must hold to _it_!" It was accordingly found so with the lead, and ere long, having kept past the point, the same milky hue could be noticed as it were jagging off through the darker water, and winding away hither and thither all round the other side, till you lost it. However, here we brailed up and hauled down everything, letting go an anchor, little more than half a mile from a small sloping beach, where the strange water actually surged up through the shadow of the land, in one glittering sheet like new-fallen snow, while the back-wash seethed