We came in so close to shore that I thought we must strike every instant, and so we should have done had there been any blundering on his part.
We went very slowly that day, as became the atmosphere and the scene, the dangers of our way, and the dignity of our guide.
"It's an ill wind that blows nobody good," said Dennis, as we hung over the side.

"If it's for repairs we've put into Paradise, long life to the old tub and her rotten timbers! I wouldn't have missed _this_ for a lady's berth in the West Indian Mail, and my passage paid!" "Nor I." "Nor I." _This_ was indeed worth having gone through a good deal to see.

The channel through which we picked our way was marked out by little buoys, half white and half black, and on either side the coral was just awash.
Close at hand the water was emerald green or rosy purple, according to its depth and the growths below; half-a-mile away it was deep blue against lines of dazzling surf and coral sand; and the reefs and rocks amongst whose deadly edges our hideous pilot steered for our lives, were like beds of flowers blooming under water.

Red, purple, yellow, orange, pale green, dark green, in patches quite milky, and in patches a mass of all sorts of sea-weed, a gay garden on a white ground, shimmering through crystal! And down below the crabs crawled about, and the fishes shot hither and thither; and over the surface of the water, from reef to reef and island to island, the tern and sea-gulls skimmed and swooped about.
We anchored that evening, and the pilot went ashore.

Lovely as the day had been, we were (for some mysterious reason) more tired at the end of it than on days when we had been working three times as hard.