All this appeared to us like a dream; ten minutes before we had been ploughing along the open ocean, not dreaming that there lay land within three hundred miles of us, now we were in the midst of an immense and unknown shoal, and a flaw of wind, or a shift in the set of the currents which must traverse its intricate channels, might fling us on a bank of sand or rock, on which we would leave the bones of ship and men. Of course, our first business was to make our moorings as secure as possible. The Mosquito men, who have keen eyes, both by night and day, pointed out a dark lump upon our starboard bow, which we soon made out to be a low lying rock, and accordingly manning our light boat, we speedily carried out a warp, which we made shift to secure round a jagged projection of the reef, all clustered over with oysters and sea-weed. Meantime, Captain Jem, with Bristol Tom, and myself, and sundry of the oldest mariners, retired into the great cabin to examine the maps and charts. We certainly did not know the exact position of the schooner, for in the hurry of yesterday’s chase, no observation had been taken, but this we knew that no shoal or island, indeed no soundings at all, were laid down in our charts, near which we could possibly be. ‘No, comrades,’ quoth Captain Jem, ‘here be rocks and banks, shoals and sands, which no mariner hath up to this time reported; although, mayhap, many a brave seaman hath found his long home amongst them.’ We looked long and earnestly to the east, before the blessed light came out upon the ocean. At length the dawn grew pale in the sky, then a red, warm glow brightened above the waves; the thin night mists rolled away; the sea-birds came shrieking and clanging from their nests and holes, and we, truly, saw a lonely and desolate sight. All around the schooner, for miles and miles, was a pale greenish sea, laced, as it were, with bars and streaks of surf, which spread around like open net-work, and dotted here and there with great smooth banks of bright sand, and low, long reefs like jagged walls, rising now and then into a higher point of precipitous rock which showed, perhaps, some eight or ten feet above the level of the surf. The blue sea formed the framing of this dismal picture. As for the Spaniard he was nowhere to be seen, and, sooth to say, we thought or cared little about him. In regard to our own position, it was a miracle how we had by chance attained it; when I mounted the rigging and saw the great chaos of banks and spits of sand, and white belts of tumbling surf, through which we had reeled and staggered, as it were, blindfolded, without in the least knowing our course or the direction of the channels, I felt as if a miracle had been accomplished in our favour. Having got safely in, however, the question was now how to get safely out again, and so having called a council upon the deck, it was determined that the schooner should be made as snug as possible at her moorings, while the shallop, which