"No, no," quoth Twig; "come along a quarter of a mile further, and I will show you a nook within the reef where we shall be safe from John Shark, or rather the sharks will be safe from Flamingo's bones there. He would be like a sackful of wooden ladles tossed to them. The fish would find him as digestible as a bag of nutcrackers, seasoned with cocoa-nut shells--ah!--but come along, come along. Oh such a bath, Mr Brail, as I will show you!" We left the cocoa-nut grove, and when we arrived at the spot indicated we got out to reconnoitre. There was a long reef, about musket-shot from the beach at the widest, on the outside of which the swell broke in thunder, the strong breeze blowing the spray and flakes of frothy brine back in our faces, even where we stood. The reef, like a bow, hemmed in a most beautiful semicircular pool of green sea water, clear as crystal; its surface darkened and crisped by tiny blue sparkling wavelets, which formed a glorious and pellucid covering to the forest, if I may so speak, of coral branches and seaferns that covered the bottom, and which, even where deepest, were seen distinctly in every fibre. When you held your face close to the water, and looked steadily into its pure depths, you saw the bottom at three fathoms perfectly alive, and sparkling with shoals of fishes of the most glowing colours, gamboling in the sun, birdlike amongst the boughs, as if conscious of their safety from their ravenous comrades outside; while nothing could be more beautiful than the smooth sparkling silver sand as the water shoaled towards the beach. The last was composed of a belt of small transparent pebbles, about ten yards wide, overhung by a rotten bank of turf of the greenest and most fragrant description, that had been only sufficiently undermined by the lap lapping of the water at tempestuous spring-tides (at no time rising here above three feet), to form a continuous although rugged bench the whole way along the shore. "Now, if one were riding incautiously here, he might break his horse's leg without much trouble," quoth Don Felix. "Why, Jacob, speaking of horsemanship, how did you like your style of immersion yesterday?--a novel sort of bathing-machine, to be sure." "You be hanged, Felix," quoth his ally, with a most quizzical grin, as he continued his peeling. "Do you know I've a great mind to try an equestrian dip myself," persisted his friend. "Here, Twister--take off Monkey's saddle, and bring him here."