"Good-morning, Ned," said Jack with a faint smile, and the man went below, while, feeling chilly and depressed, and as if it would be wiser to follow the fellow's example, he walked moodily forward, gazing over the side in the direction of the island, and noticing now that there was a low line of thick mist lying just over where the billows broke in foam and produced the deep thunderous roar. Cold, chilling, and repellent as it was, Jack could not repress a shiver, and the feeling of dislike to the voyage, which had been rapidly dying out in the new interests he felt, came back with renewed force. "Why did we come?" he muttered. As his eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom, he saw that the low clouds seemed to be in bands above each other, increasing the strangely forbidding aspect. Just then there was a light step on the deck, and the mate came up. "Morning," he said. "Here we are, you see." "See? Yes; but what a place!" "Eh?" cried the mate in surprise; "what, don't you like the look of it?" "No; it is horrible. Just a black and grey mountain rising out of the sea. Are we at anchor?" "No; only lying-to, waiting for the full light, so as to find the opening through the reef. There is no anchorage out here; I dare say the lead would go down a mile." "What, so close to the shore?" "Oh yes. These volcanic mountains rise up suddenly--steeply, I mean, from very great depths, and then the coral insects begin building upon them, and form regular breakwaters of solid stone all round, and these coral reefs rise just to the surface, and keep the waves from washing the sides of the volcano away." "What a pity!" said Jack mockingly. "I don't see any good in preserving a great black-looking heap like that." "Don't you?" said the mate, smiling, and looking back up at the gloomy eminence. "No, I don't," replied Jack, with a touch of early morning ill-humour in his tones. "But isn't that nonsense? The sea could not wash away an island like that." "What! Why, give it time and it will wash away a continent. But an island like this would be nothing to it without the coral insects stopped it. Some volcanoes rise in these seas and never get much above the surface--the waves wash them away as fast as they form. You see they are only made up of loose cinders and ashes which fall over outside as they are thrown up. Others are more solid if liquid lava boils over the edge of the crater and runs down. This gradually hardens into massive rock, and resists the beating of the sea till the coral insects have done their work, building up to the surface of the sea, and then going on at the sides." "I suppose you are right," said Jack with a yawn, "but the sooner we get away from this ugly place the better." "Think so? Well, wait and see it by daylight first. Look!" He pointed to where, nearly a mile above them, a bright golden spot had appeared.