64 THE CRATER; CHAPTER V. "The king s son have I landed by himself; Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting. His arms in this sad knot." Tempest. HAVING completed this first examination of the crater, Mark and Bob next picked their way again to the summit of its wall, and took their seats directly over the arch. Here they enjoyed as good a look-out as the little island afforded, not only of its own surface, but of the surround ing ocean. Mark now began to comprehend the character of the singular geological formation, into the midst of which the Rancocus had been led, as it might almost be by the hand of Providence itself. He was at that moment seated on the topmost pinnacle of a submarine mountain of volcanic origin submarine as to all its elevations, heights and spaces, with the exception of the crater where he had just taken his stand, and the little bit of visible and venerable lava, by which it was surrounded. It is true that this lava rose very near the surface of the ocean, in fifty places that he could see at no great distance, forming the numberless breakers that characterized the place; but, with the exception of Mark s Reef, as Bob named the principal island on the spot, two or three detached islets within a cable s-length of it, and a few little more remote, the particular haunts of birds, no other land was visible, far or near. As Mark sat there, on that rock of concrete ashes, he speculated on the probable extent of the shoals and reefg by which he was surrounded. Judging by what he then saw, and recalling the particulars of the examination made from the cross-trees of the ship, he supposed that the dan gers and difficulties of the navigation must extend, in an east and west diretion, at least twelve marine leagues;
