The shoal was made by the summit of the crater; breakers appearing in one or two places where the hill had been highest.  The boat met with no difficulty, however, in passing over the spot, merely avoiding the white water.  When the lead was dropped into the centre of the crater, it took out just twenty fathoms of line.  That distance, then, below the surface of the sea, had the crater, and its town, and its people sunk!  If any object had floated, as many must have done, it had long before drifted off in the currents of the ocean, leaving no traces behind to mark a place that had so lately been tenanted by human beings.  The Rancocus anchored in twenty-three fathoms, it being thought she lay nearly over the Colony House, and for eight-and-forty hours the exploration was continued.  The sites of many a familiar spot were ascertained, but nothing could be found on which even a spar might be anchored, to buoy out a lost community.

At the end of the time mentioned, the ship bore up for Betto’s group.  There young Ooroony was found, peacefully ruling as of old.  Nothing was known of the fate of the colonists, though surprise had been felt at not receiving any visits from their vessels.  The intercourse had not been great of late, and most of the Kannakas had come away.  Soon after the Woolstons had left, the especial friends of humanity, and the almost exclusive lovers of the “people” having begun to oppress them by exacting more work than was usual, and forgetting to pay for it.  These men could say but little about the condition of the colony beyond this fact.  Not only they, but all in the group, however, could render some account of the awful earthquake of the last season, which, by their descriptions, greatly exceeded n violence anything formerly known in those regions.  It was in that earthquake, doubtless, that the colony of the crater perished to a man.

Leaving handsome and useful presents with his friend, young Ooroony, and putting ashore two or three Kannakas who were in the vessel, Woolston now sailed for Valparaiso.  Here he disposed of his cargo to great advantage, and purchased copper in pigs at almost as great.  With this new cargo he reached Philadelphia, after an absence of rather more than nine months.

Of the colony of the crater and its fortunes, little was ever said among its survivors.  It came into existence in a manner that was most extraordinary, and went out of it in one that was awful.  Mark and Bridget, however, pondered deeply on these things; the influence of which coloured and chastened their future lives.  The husband often went over, in his mind, all the events connected with his knowledge of the Reef.  He would thus recall his shipwreck and desolate condition when suffered first to reach the rocks; the manner in which he was the instrument in causing vegetation to spring up in the barren places; the earthquake, and the upheaving of the islands from out of the waters:  the arrival of his wife and