"Since that experience, I’ve many times examined the charts of the region where we were" Nichols went on "But they don’t begin to show the whole story. Beyond the middle island, under whose headland we’d found transitory shelter, stretched a larger island, distant some five miles from the other; between them lay the most intricate, extraordinary and terrible nest of reefs ever devised by the mind of the Maker and the hand of geologic change. No wonder the surveys haven’t been completed in that region; I defy any man, in the calmest and clearest of weather, to take a craft among those reefs and come out with a whole bottom. Any man, that is, but Lee Fu Chang, who isn’t in the service of the Admiralty. "The outlying fringe of reefs that had broken our first approach ended at the middle island; beyond that, to windward, lay clear water, and the nest of reefs that I’ve mentioned received the full force of the wind and sea. Five miles of water stretched in mad confusion, a solid whiteness of spouting foam that seemed to generate a hideous illumination, that reflected a dingy glow into the abandoned sky. All the cataracts of the world rolled into one couldn’t have matched the awful spectacle. We were still flying through quiet water; but just beyond the point of the middle island the long wind-swept rollers burst in tall columns of spray that shut off the farther view like a curtain, where the reef of rocks stood in an apparently unbroken wall. "It was directly against the face of this wall that Lee Fu was driving the sampan. The first lift of the outside swell had begun to catch us. I held my breath, as moment by moment we cut down the margin of safety. No use to interfere; perhaps he knew what he was doing, perhaps he had really gone mad under the terrific strain of the night. As he steered, he seemed to be watching intently for landmarks; his eyes were everywhere, but more often, I noticed, on the shore to windward that rapidly changed its contour as we left it on the port quarter. Was it possible that, in this abandoned spot, he knew his bearings ... that there was a way through?... "Wilbur, at Lee Fu’s command, had left us without a word. He now stood at the rail, supporting himself by main strength, facing the frightful line of the approaching reef; on his back was written the desperate struggle that went on in his soul. It bent and twisted, sagging in sudden irresolution, writhing with stubborn obduracy, straightening and shaking itself at times as a wave of firmness and confidence passed over him, only to quail once more before the sight that met his eyes ... He couldn’t believe that Lee Fu would hold that suicidal course. Only another moment!—he kept crying to himself. Hold on a little longer! Yet the power of his will had been sapped by the long hours of night and the terrors of the dawn; and courage, which with him rested only on the sands of ostentation, had crumbled long ago.