Within, the lagoon spread its calm lake-like surface away to the white coral shore of the central atoll.
Between these two waters, the greater and the less, a waving palisade of tall-stemmed palm-trees rose on a narrow ribbon of circular land that formed the fringing reef.

All night through he had felt, with a strange eerie misgiving, the very foundations of the land thrill under his feet at every dull thud or boom of the surf on its restraining barrier.

Now that he could see that thin belt of shore in its actual shape and size, he was not astonished at this constant shock; what surprised him rather was the fact that such a speck of land could hold its own at all against the ceaseless cannonade of that seemingly irresistible ocean.
He stood up, hatless, in his battered tweed suit, and surveyed the scene of their present and future adventures.

It took but a glance to show him that the whole ground-plan of the island was entirely circular.

In the midst of all rose the central atoll itself, a tiny mountain-peak, just projecting with its hills and gorges to a few hundred feet above the surface of the ocean.