"They rowed across the south face of the rock, where the ship had struck, and found the water there deep past all knowing. The rock wasn’t coral, and no coral formation surrounded it. In the clear blue water beneath them huge banners of kelp waved and winnowed like lifeless hands. Not a vestige of the _Evening Star_ remained; she had disappeared in the unfathomable gulfs of the Pacific. It was a mere crag that had caught her, a needle-point piercing the floor of an otherwise unobstructed ocean, the topmost spire of some mighty mountain sunk in the bowels of the world. It may never before have been seen by mortal man; it certainly wasn’t indicated on the best charts of that day. She would have had to seek a thousand years to touch it. A ship’s length either side would have cleared her.... "They waited beside the rock till noon, to get an observation. Then they rowed away to the northward, bound for the Sandwich Islands. The dark spot on the water dwindled and disappeared in their wake. Devereux told me that, quite unaccountably, he felt his heart sinking as they lost sight of it; after all, it was their only link with a remote and perhaps unattainable world. "The first night after the disaster, a heavy squall separated the boats. They couldn’t find each other, and never came together again. The second mate reached Callao after a terrible journey, the first to report the loss of the _Evening Star_. He had been nearly swamped in that first squall. For two days he had hunted frantically for the other boats. Then, not being a good navigator, and having a very imperfect chart of the Pacific Islands, he had changed his course and steered due east, knowing that he would strike the American continent if he could keep on going. The fact of his arrival in Callao, its date, and his reported date of the disaster, are beyond dispute; for my own satisfaction, I have looked these matters up in the official records. "The captain, in the longboat, was never heard of again. Him and his crew the Pacific took for toll. "Devereux was picked up at sea, alive, well, and alone in the _Evening Star’s_ small whaleboat, _exactly one year and three months after the ship went down_" "Easy, Nichols!" I remonstrated "Say that again, please. You can’t expect me to swallow it whole at the first try"