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Loose ends of rope stood out stiffly horizontal, and, when a whipping gave, the loose end frazzled and blew away. Mulhall touched one and then another and pointed to the shore. The grass-sheds had disappeared, and Parlay's house rocked drunkenly, Because the wind blew lengthwise along the atoll, the house had been sheltered by the miles of cocoanut trees.
And if you turn to Mr. Darwin's great work upon the coral reefs, you will see a very beautiful chart of the world, which he prepared with great pains and labour, showing the distribution on the one hand of the reefs, and on the other of the volcanoes; you will find that in no case does the atoll accompany the volcano, or the volcano burst up among the atolls.
The builder coral, glimmering in its softer parts with delicate hues and tints, throws up its stony barrier through a thousand miles of length and a third as much in breadth, fringing the continents with bays and sounds and atoll islands like fairy rings of the sea.
But we cannot believe that the broad summit of a mountain lies buried at the depth of a few fathoms beneath every atoll, and nevertheless throughout the immense areas above-named, with not one point of rock projecting above the level of the sea; for we may judge with some accuracy of mountains beneath the sea, by those on the land; and where can we find a single chain several hundred miles in length and of considerable breadth, much less several such chains, with their many broad summits attaining the same height, within from 120 to 180 feet?
The summit is a plateau surrounded by a rim of hills of reef formation, which represent the ring of islets of an ancient atoll. Beneath the reef are thick beds of limestone, composed largely of the remains of foraminifers, which cover the lavas and fragraental materials of the old submarine volcano.
For a trifling sum I could have chartered a schooner and sought the atoll. But all my life I've hunted odds big, tremendous odds to crush down and swarm over. The only interest I had in life. And so I planted the crew and stole the Wanderer because it presented whopping odds. I selected a young and dare-devil crew to keep me on edge.
In his next book he published his observations made at the Keeling Atoll and announced his theory of the formation of coral islands. This was a distinctly scientific investigation, and it won such immediate favor among geologists as to increase materially the young man's reputation.
We can easily see how an island fronted only on one side, or on one side with one end or both ends encircled by barrier-reefs, might after long-continued subsidence be converted either into a single wall-like reef, or into an atoll with a great straight spur projecting from it, or into two or three atolls tied together by straight reefs all of which exceptional cases actually occur.
But this theory lies under a greater difficulty, as will be evident, when we consider on what foundations the atolls of the larger archipelagoes rest: nevertheless, if the rim of a crater afforded a basis at the proper depth, I am far from denying that a reef like a perfectly characterised atoll might not be formed; some such, perhaps, now exist; but I cannot believe in the possibility of the greater number having thus originated.
On the western side of the atoll, the "flat" lying between the margin of the reef and the beach, is very wide; and in front of the regular beach with its conglomerate basis, there is, in most parts, a bed of sand and loose fragments with trees growing out of it, which apparently is not reached even by the spray at high water.
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