Towards her, the taut Norah Creina, vulture-wise, wriggled to windward: come from so far to pick her bones.

And, look as I pleased, there was no other presence of man or of man's handiwork; no Honolulu schooner lay there crowded with armed rivals, no smoke rose from the fire at which I fancied Trent cooking a meal of sea-birds.

It seemed, after all, we were in time, and I drew a mighty breath.
I had not arrived at this reviving certainty before the breakers were already close aboard, the leadsman at his station, and the captain posted in the fore cross-trees to con us through the coral lumps of the lagoon.

All circumstances were in our favour, the light behind, the sun low, the wind still fresh and steady, and the tide about the turn.

A moment later we shot at racing speed betwixt two pier heads of broken water; the lead began to be cast, the captain to bawl down his anxious directions, the schooner to tack and dodge among the scattered dangers of the lagoon; and at one bell in the first dog watch, we had come to our anchor off the north-east end of Middle Brooks Island, in five fathoms water.