“Steady!” exclaimed Greaves. He viewed the island through the glass. “We are opening the reef,” said he; and, taking the telescope from him, I instantly discerned the sallow line of a projection of rock, with a dazzle of sunshine coming and going along the base of the formation as the swell rose and sank there. Deep silence fell upon the brig. All hands of us--nay, my beloved Galloon and the very brig herself--seemed to know that in a few minutes the cave would lie open before us. And a few minutes disclosed it. I viewed the picture as though I had beheld it before, so clearly had Greaves painted it in his description, so familiar had it grown by frequent meditation. Almost abreast of us now, within a mile, lay a very perfect little natural harbor. The reefs swept out from either hand the island. They looked like piers. They needed but a lighthouse to have passed, at a glance, for roughly constructed artificial piers. Within their embrace lay a wide, smooth surface of dark blue water. A flat, livid front of rock overlooked, on the left, this placid expanse. Low down on the right of this rock ran a herbless and treeless beach, without scintillation as of sand or gleam as of coral--a dead ground of foreshore, mouse-colored; a sort of pumice, with a small shelving to the wash of the water. But I had no eyes for that beach then, nor for any other portion of the island saving the vast, sullen, gloomy fissure which denoted the entrance of the cave right amidships of the tall face of flat rock. Greaves let fall the glass from his eye. He swung it with an odd gesture of irritable triumph. “Back the main topsail, Mr. Fielding.” I instantly delivered the necessary orders for heaving the ship to. The men sprang out of the bows, and rushed to the braces and clew garnets as though to a summons which signified life or death to them. The brig’s way was arrested. She came with her head to the southwest, bringing the island upon her starboard quarter. All the time, while I sung out orders and while the men were hauling upon the braces, Greaves stood at the rail, his eye glued to the glass that was pointed at the cavern. He turned his head when the noise about our decks had ceased, and, observing me standing at a little distance regarding him, he beckoned. “Look for yourself,” said he.