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We of course had a leadsman in the chains taking continual casts of the lead as we proceeded, and from these it appeared that the depth of water in the lagoon, close up against the inner face of the reef, amounted to seven and a half fathoms, shoaling very gradually and regularly as we neared the island, the exceeding beauty of which evoked a continuous chorus of admiration from the delighted emigrants as its many attractions unfolded themselves at our approach.
In the shallower water this motion increases in proportion to the shoaling, and in the regions near the shores the currents of the sea which, except the massive drift from the poles, do not usually touch the bottom, begin to have their influence.
We could not go straight at it, but had to travel all the way around it, sixteen miles from shore, because it is fenced with an invisible coral reef. At last we sighted buoys, bobbing here and there, and then we glided into a narrow channel among them, "raised the reef," and came upon shoaling blue water that soon further shoaled into pale green, with a surface scarcely rippled.
Gently we edged away towards them; Meliboeus standing before the mast with his double-barrel ready, and motioning to me how to steer, as the main-sail hid the birds from my view. They perceived us, and began to swim along shore at a rapid rate; the water was shoaling fast, and we greatly feared they would escape, but still we held on.
She was present at Copenhagen and at Trafalgar, being in this final scene under the command of an officer who had served in her as his first lieutenant, and was afterwards his flag-captain at the Nile. In 1809 she was totally lost in the river La Plata, having run aground, and then settled on one of her anchors, which, upon the sudden shoaling of the water, had been let go to bring her up.
The man had insisted that it was of no moment, and John Woolfolk had been driven by a consuming desire to leave the miasmatic shore. He swung the pole forward and cried: "Four and a half." The water was shoaling rapidly. The breaking waves on the port and starboard swept by with lightning rapidity.
The brig yawed as they spoke, and as she came round a spurt of smoke whiffed out from her quarter. It was a pure piece of bravado, for the gun could scarce carry halfway. Then with a jaunty swing the little ship came into the wind again, and shot round a fresh curve in the winding channel. "The water's shoaling rapidly, sir," repeated the second lieutenant. "There's six fathoms by the chart."
Doesn't it actually seem to shed a blue radiation round it?" "How perfectly beautiful!" said Violet; "see, Eva, how intense blue and green seem to be shot into each other, or to play together like the waters of a shoaling sea." "Shall I take a root or two?" said Kennedy. "Not the slightest use," said Julian; "they only grow at certain elevations, and would be dead before you got down."
Although constructed with great care forward as to buoyancy, this vessel made plunges into the waves she met that nearly buried her; and, once or twice, the shocks were so great, that those on board her could with difficulty persuade themselves they had not struck the bottom. The lead, nevertheless, still gave water sufficient, though it was shoaling fast, and with a most ominous regularity.
The sweep of the land, and the shelter of the bay, the shoaling of the shore without a rock to break it, the headland that shuts out both wind and waves; and outside the headland, off Pebbleridge, deep water for a fleet of line-of-battle ships to anchor and command the land approaches moreover, a stream of the purest water from deep and never-failing springs Darling, the place of all places in England for the French to land is opposite to your front door."
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