Light though the wind, the ship gradually crept nearer the island; and by breakfast time is was abeam of her, and about four miles distant. Save the rock before mentioned, no part of it was very high; it seemed to be about the size stated by Bartelot, and yet, strange to say, it was not recorded or borne in any map or chart on board. Now there fell a dead and listless calm. The sun was burning hot and the sea glistened like oil beneath its rays, but the fertility and greenness of this nameless and unknown isle were charming to look upon. Morley regretted the fresh delay occasioned by this calm, especially after the lost hundred miles yesterday (though a hundred were a trifle after Morrison's galling calculation of the oceans he had yet to traverse), but he could not resist the emotions of curiosity and novelty so peculiar to his age and temperament; and thus he expressed a strong wish to visit this _terra incognita_--this beautiful island of the southern sea. But Bartelot hesitated. "It may be the head-quarters, the rendezvous, of those who pursued us yesterday," said he; "and some of their sort, shipmates and companions, may be lurking among those thickets, the foliage of which seems so inviting." "Save the sea-birds, I cannot discover a living object about it," urged Morley. "There may be savages--who can say?--and most likely wild animals. There are some very ferocious boars on Tristan d'Acunha, and other South Sea isles. Then we have no arms." "The revolver and two fowling-pieces----" "Are not enough, Morley." "Come, let us be off." "Lastly, a sudden breeze might spring up, and blow the ship off the island to sea, so far that the boat, and what would be worse, its crew, might be lost. Four sufficient reasons, Morley, for not venturing ashore." So Bartelot resisted all his friend's importunities, and the day passed away in idleness, after an observation had been taken at noon, and the exact bearings of the island recorded in the ship's log by Morrison, for the information of the Admiralty, Lloyd's, and others in London. The calm continued; not a speck could be traced in the unclouded sky, betokening a coming wind, or a casual current of air. The ship lay like a log, with her courses clewed up, her spanker brailed and all the rest of her canvas hanging loose and straight from the yardheads; the wheel, left to itself, oscillated a spoke or two, alternately to port and starboard. There seemed to be little or no current in the water; she had probably not moved in any way more than half her own length for three hours, as Morley perceived by a bunch of seaweed, the top tuft of some mighty trailer (the root of which was, perhaps, forty fathoms deep in the bed of the ocean), which rested on the oily surface of the water, and remained in the same position, with regard to the ship, about five feet from the port quarter-gallery.