We were off the island again by nine o’clock. Greaves was wise to fill his casks; the water was sweet, the road home long, and our peculiar care was not to be forced to look in anywhere for supplies of any sort. Yet it was as depressing as a disappointment to return to the island. Is there an uglier heap of rock in the wide world? The black lava of the scowling Galapagos yields nothing more horrid. And the spirit of its dark and horrible solitude visited you the more sharply because of the crawling, stealthy life you beheld low down by the wash of the beach, remote from the inland loneliness; the creeping shape of the elephant tortoise, of the black lizard, of crabs as huge as targets, and no further motion save what’s in the air, where the ocean fowl are glancing. That island was a fit tomb for the ship which it caverned. You thought of it as a grave, of the ship as a corpse; and the ugly heap of flat split cliff and black lava climbing into spires, and front of cinderous rock corrugated by the arrest of their glowing cataracts, fell cold upon the sight, and colder yet upon the heart. We sent a hand aloft as before to keep a sharp lookout. The island lay square in the north, and while we hung hove-to off the reefs, at any hour something large and armed might come sailing up from the horizon at the back, and heave the breast of a royal over the western or eastern point ere we could guess that there was anything within leagues and leagues of us. Yan Bol took charge of the longboat and went ashore. It was a fine morning, but the sky looked dim, like a blue eye after tears; the sun had his sting of yesterday, but not his flash. A long swell swung through the sea, but the heave was out of the north, and we lay south, the land between; it was smooth here or we could have done little in the way of watering. The corners of the land illustrated the weight of the swell; the white water burst in clouds there, and the noise of it came along with the voice of a gathering storm. Greaves was so much better of the pain in his side that he sat at breakfast and took a chair upon the deck afterward. He called me to his cabin, while we were heading for the island, and asked me to look at his ribs. There was a little discoloration, such as might attend a bruise--no more. I pressed the bones, but he did not wince. I dug somewhat deep in the soft part just under the liver, but he uttered no sound. The pain was very nearly gone, he told me; yet he looked pale, and his eyes wanted their former light and old activity of glance.