And still lower and lower, with wonderful rapidity now, as the great glowing disk was seen to rise above the edge of the sea, till the whole island was ablaze in the morning sunshine, and the gloomy, forbidding mass was one glorious picture of tropic beauty. Forests grouped themselves about the lower mountain slopes, lovely park-like stretches could be seen lower still, and beneath lower groves of palm-like trees a band of golden sand. Nearer still, thin lines of cocoa palms edging what appeared to be a lake of the purest blue, edged in turn with a sparkling line of foam, where the billows seemed to be eternally fretting to get over the surrounding reef and plunge themselves into the placid, perfectly calm lagoon. Lastly there was the dark sea, now lit up into a gleaming plain of gently heaving waves; all being shot as it were with purple, where again patches of rippled damascened silver flashed in the opening of a new day. "It is too beautiful," muttered the boy to himself. "It seems almost as if it hurt and made one sad. Oh," he said aloud, "and I never called him up to see." "Eh, what's that?" said Sir John. "Think we were sleeping through all this? Oh no! What a glorious sunrise, my boy." "Glorious," cried the doctor, grasping the boy's arm. "I didn't think Nature could be so grand. Here, I don't feel as if I could wait for breakfast. Oh, Jack, my lad, what times we're going to have out there." "Well, gentlemen," said the captain, coming up with his face shining in the morning light, "will this do for you? What do you say to my island now?" "Thank you," said Sir John, offering his hand. "I don't think we shall want to go any farther, Bradleigh. There will be enough here to last us for life." "Right," cried the doctor, rubbing his hands. "Only to think of our pottering away our existence at home when there were places like this to see. I say, you know, Nature isn't fair. The idea of such grand, clever chaps as we are--or think we are--having to put up with our gloomy, foggy island, and a set of naked savages having such a home as that. I say it's quite unnatural." "I don't suppose they appreciate the beauties of the place," said Sir John. "Will it do?" cried the doctor. "I'm philosopher enough to say that this is just the sort of place where a man can be happy. You don't get me away from here, I can tell you. I mean to stay." "For the present, at all events," said Sir John. "I question though whether Captain Bradleigh here will want to stop very long." "Just as long as you like, gentlemen," said the captain. "I can make myself contented anywhere. That is," he added with a laugh, "if I can find good safe anchorage for the vessel I command. Well then, if you think this place will do for a stay, the first thing to be done is to find the way through the reef into the lagoon. There's an opening somewhere near here."