He opened the door of his berth and looked out. Van Laar was seated at the table, eating his breakfast. Greaves closed the door and seated himself on his bed. “Last year,” said he, “I was in command of a small vessel named the _Hero_. It matters not how it happened that I came to be at the Philippines. There I took in a small lading for Guayaquil. When about sixty leagues to the south’ard of the Galapagos Islands we made land, and hove into view an island of which no mention was made in any of the charts of those seas which I possessed. There was nothing in _that_. There is much land yet to be discovered in that ocean. I have no faith in any of the charts of the Western American seaboard, and trust to nothing but a good lookout. We hove this island into view, and I steered for it with a leadsman in the chains on either hand. I hoped to be of some humble service to the navigator by obtaining the correct bearings of the island; but I had no mind to delay my voyage by sounding, saving only for the security of my own ship. “We sighted the island soon after sunrise, and at noon were abreast of it. It was a very remarkable heap of rock, much after the pattern of the Galapagos, gloomy with black lava, and the land consisted of masses of broken lava, compacted into cliffs and small conical hills, that reminded me somewhat of the Island of Ascension. I examined it very carefully with a telescope and beheld trees and vegetation in one place, but no signs of human life--no signs of any sort of life, if it were not for a number of turtle or tortoises crawling upon the beach and looking like ladybirds in the distance. But, as we slowly drew past the island, we opened a sort of natural harbor formed by two long lines of reef, one of them incurving as though it was a pier and the handiwork of man. The front of cliff that overlooked this natural harbor was very lofty, and in the middle of it was a tremendous fissure--a colossal cave--the shape of the mouth like the sides of a roughly-drawn letter A. Inside this cave ’twas as dark as evening; yet I seemed with my glass to obscurely behold something within. I looked and looked, and then handed the telescope to the mate, who said there was something inside the cave. It resembled to his fancy the scaffolding of a building, but what it exactly was neither of us could make out. “The weather was very quiet; the breeze off the island, as its bearings then were at this time of sighting the cave, and the water within the natural harbor was as sheet-calm as polished steel. I said to the mate: “‘We must find time to examine what is inside that cave. Call away four hands and get the boat over. Keep a bright lookout as you approach. There is nothing living that is visible outside, but who knows what may be astir within the darkness of that tremendous yawn? At the first hint of danger pull like the devil for the ship, and I will take care to cover your retreat.’