“We may love the Reef, dear Mark, for what it did for you in your distress, but I foresee that this Eden will eventually become our home.”

“There are many things to render this mountain preferable to the Reef; though, now we are seriously thinking of a colony, it may be well to keep both.  Even Rancocus would be of great value to us, as a pasture for goats, and a range for cattle.  It may be long before the space will be wanted by human beings, for actual cultivation; but each of our present possessions is now, and long will continue to be, of great use to us as assistants.  We shall live principally on the Peak, I think myself; but we must fish, get our salt, and obtain most of our vegetables from the Reef.”

“Oh! that Reef, that Reef—­how long will it be, Mark, before we see it?”

The enamoured young husband laughed, and kissed his charming wife, and told her to restrain her impatience.  Several hours must elapse before they could even come in sight of the rocks.  These hours did pass, and with the occurrence of no event worthy of being recorded.  The Trades usually blew fresh in that quarter of the ocean, but it was seldom that they brought tempests.  Occasionally squalls did occur, it is true; but a prudent and experienced mariner could ordinarily guard against their consequences, while the hurricane seldom failed, like most other great physical phenomena, to have its precursors, that were easily seen and understood.  On the present occasion, the boat ran across the passage in very good time, making the crater in about five hours, and the ship’s masts in six.  Mark made a good land-fall coming in to leeward of the cape, or low promontory already mentioned—­Cape South he called it—­while there still remained several hours of day.  Bridget was greatly struck with the vast difference she could not help finding between the appearance of these low, dark, and so often naked rocks, and that of the Eden she had just left.  Tears came into her eyes, as she pictured her husband a solitary wanderer over these wastes, with no water, even, but that which fell from the clouds, or which came from the casks of the ship.  When, however, she gave utterance to this feeling, one so natural to her situation, Mark told her to have patience until they reached the crater, when she would see that he had possessed a variety of blessings, for which he had every reason to be grateful to God.

There was no difficulty in getting into the proper channel, when the boat fairly flew along the rocks that lined the passages.  So long as she was in rough water, the sails of so small a craft were necessarily becalmed a good deal of the time; but, now that there was nothing to intercept the breeze, she caught it all, and made the most of it.  To Mark’s surprise, as they passed the Prairie, he saw all of his swine on it, now, including two half-unconsumed litters of well-grown pigs, some seventeen in number.  These animals had actually found their way along the