a plash on the beach that you could hear: the place was just what a sailor may have had a notion of all his life, without exactly seeing it till then; and though, as yet, one had but a rough guess of its size, why, it couldn't be less than a couple of miles from end to end, with more than that breadth, perhaps, at the low side toward the reefs. Not a soul amongst the man-o'-war'smen, I daresay, as they pressed together in the schooner's bows to see into it, but would have taken his traps that moment, if I'd told him, and gone ashore on the chance of passing his days there; so it wasn't hard to conceive, from the state it seemed to put their rough sunburnt faces in, honest as they looked, how a similar fancy would work with Master Harry Foster, even if it tried his virtue a little. I had no more doubt in my own mind, by this time, of it's being the fellow's intended "hermitage," than I had of it's being the same White-water Island I had heard of myself, or the spot which Jones seemed to know so well: 'twas likely the foremast-man had got inkling of it somewhat in the way I did; and lying, as it happened to do, between no less than three channels which the Indiaman might take, after dodging us in this fashion round the long cluster of the Maldives, she couldn't make north-westward again for the open sea, without setting Foster and his mates pretty well upon their trip. Indeed, if she were to eastward of the chain at present, as I was greatly inclined to believe, the course of the breeze made it impossible for her to do otherwise; but there was one thing always kept lurking about my mind, like a cover to something far worse that I didn't venture to dwell upon--namely, that Captain Finch might get wind of their purpose, and drive them on another tack by knocking it on the head, either at the time or beforehand, without the courage to settle _them_. Nothing in the world would have pleased me better than to pounce upon ugly Harry, at his first breakfast ashore here; but the bare horizon, and the quiet look of the island since ever we hove in sight of it, showed this wasn't to be. At any rate, however, I was bent on seeing how the land lay, and what sort of a place it was; so accordingly, as soon as the hands had got breakfast, Westwood and I at once pulled ashore with a boat's-crew well armed, to overhaul it. We found the sandy beach covered, for a good way up, with a frothy slime that, no doubt, came from the water on that side, with ever so many different kinds of blubber, sea-jelly, star-fish, and shell; while the rocky edge round to windward was hung with weed that made the blocks below it seem to rise out of every surge, like green-headed white-bearded mermen bathing. Glad enough we were to get out of the queer sulphury smell all this stuff gave out in the heat--letting the men take every one his own way into the bushes, which they enjoyed like as many schoolboys, and making, ourselves, right for the highest point.