After leaving it, the _Fish-hawk_ skirted the coast of Reykjaines, which presents as awful a scene of desolation, and of terrific struggles between fire and water, as can be imagined. The beetling cliffs of black lava are rent and broken into every conceivable shape. Deep fissures, into which the waves rush and roar with a mad fury only to be churned into foam, draw back their stony lips, as though grinning over the fate of the vessel that shall approach them too closely. Dark caverns echo the hollow booming of the waters that fill them. Peaks, pinnacles, and spires rise sharp and forbidding above the chaotic masses piled about their feet. Everywhere through the milk-white foam of the ceaselessly dashing breakers jagged rocks show themselves, like the black fangs of monstrous beasts cruelly eager for their prey. It was a sight to sober even the merry face of Breeze McCloud; while poor Nimbus, after a single glance at it, buried himself in the forecastle and refused to come out so long as they remained in the vicinity of such a “Debbil place,” as he called it. A few hours later, after carefully threading her way through narrow channels, between numerous rocky islets that rose boldly from the water, the _Fish-hawk_ dropped her anchor, and furled her sails in the harbor of Reykjavik. There were two or three square-rigged vessels in the port, and a number of fishing boats; but though it was still broad daylight, there were no signs of life aboard them, nor in the forlorn-looking little town in front of them. A solemn stillness, broken only by the occasional barking of dogs, brooded over the entire scene, and it was hard to realize that this was the capital of one of the oldest nations of the old world. Breeze thought they must have made some mistake, and got into the wrong place, and Captain Coffin would have been inclined to agree with him if it had not been for the evidence of his chart; but there was no room for doubt there. Probably no coasts on the globe have been more accurately or thoroughly surveyed than those of Iceland, and no one who has a knowledge of how they were made ever disputes the maps issued by the Danish War Office. “It’s all right, Breeze,” said the skipper. “This is the place we’ve been hunting for, miserable as it appears. We’d better turn in now for a few hours’ sleep, and perhaps things will look better to us to-morrow.” But they did not; for under the lowering skies, and through the drizzling rain in which they next came on deck, the scene looked, if possible, more dreary than it had done the night before. About six o’clock the schooner was boarded by a man wearing an official cap, a long-skirted coat, and big boots, who was rowed off from the town in a small boat carrying a green flag. He was very polite, and talked a great deal of Danish, together with a few words of English, some French, and another language, which Breeze afterwards discovered to be Latin.