The fact was, the farther we got off the land _now_, the worse--seeing that if what I dreaded should prove true, why, we were probably in thirty or forty fathoms water, where no anchor could hold for ten minutes' time--if it ever caught ground. My way would have been, to get every boat out at once, and tow in till you could see the colour of some shoal or other from aloft, then take my chance there to ride out whatever might come, to the last cable aboard of us. Accordingly I wasn't sorry to see that by this time the whole bight of the coast was slowly rising off our beam, betwixt the high land far astern and the broad bluffs upon her starboard bow; which last came out already of a sandy reddish tint, and the lower part of a clear blue, as the sun got westward on our other side. What struck me was, that the face of the water, which was all over wrinkles and winding lines, with here and there a quick ripple, when I went below, had got on a sudden quite smooth as far as you could see, as if they'd sunk down like so many eels; a long uneasy ground-swell was beginning to heave in from seaward, on which the ship rose; once or twice I fancied I could observe the colour different away towards the land, like the muddy chocolate spreading out near a river mouth at ebb-tide,--then again it was green, rather; and as for the look of the coast, I had no knowledge of it. I thought again, certainly, of the old quartermaster's account in the Iris, but there was neither anything like it to be seen, nor any sign of a break in the coast at all, though high headlands enough.