“Captain,” again cried Yan Bol, in tones like to the noise of breakers heard in the hollow of cliffs, “again I shpeaks for all handts. Vhas der dollars safe?” “Yes,” answered Greaves. The men roared out a cheer--a roaring cheer it was. It seemed to be repeated on the island a mile off, as though there was a crew ashore there. I now began to sing out the instructions which Greaves had given me. Pieces of planking for nailing over the cases were flung into the boat; lines for slings, tackles, tools, lanterns, and the like were handed down. The crew took their seats, and we shoved off, followed by a cheer from the fellows who remained behind. There went with me six men--two Dutch, the others my countrymen. The drift of the brig, though very inconsiderable, owing to the lightness of the breeze and the apparent absolute tidelessness of the sea, had veered the island a trifle southerly, and the brig lay on a line with the edge of the cliff where the cave was. The cave was, therefore, hidden from me. I stared with great curiosity at the island as we neared it, making for the head of the westerly reef to round into the lake-like expanse within. A more hideous heap of rock shows not its head above the water. The cliffs of it, where they run to any noticeable altitude, come down to the sea in twisted masses. You would have thought the process of this island’s formation had been arrested at some instant when the red-hot mass of it was writhing and pouring into the ocean over the edges of its own heaped-up stuff. No iceberg ever submitted a more fanciful sky-line; but its toad-like hue, its several hideous complexions, made it a loathly sight. The spirit shrinks from this bit of creation as from some disgusting creature. The cave was situated in the highest front of this island. The height of this front was above two hundred feet; how much above that elevation I know not. It was smooth and sheer, pumice-hued like the beach that swept from it into the northeast; so smooth and sheer was it that you would have said it had been split in twain from a like mass that had fallen and vanished. Assuredly some enormous convulsion had gone to the manufacture of that prodigious fissure or cave.