There is nothing more remarkable in this singular cluster of islands than the extensive coral reefs which fend off the sea on the northern side, and stretch out in a semicircular belt, at the distance of two or three leagues from the land. If I recollect rightly, only one of these ledges, called the North Rock, shews its head above water. All the others lie out of sight below the surface, and consequently form one of the most dangerous traps that nature has ever set in the path of mariners. On these treacherous reefs we saw many a poor vessel bilged, at moments when, from seeing the land at such a distance, they fancied themselves in perfect security.
Dangerous though they be, however, there are few things more beautiful to look at than these corallines when viewed through two or three fathoms of clear and still water. It is hardly an exaggeration to assert, that the colours of the rainbow are put to shame on a bright sunny day, by what meets the view on looking into the sea in those fairy regions. On the other hand, there are not many things, in the anxious range of navigation, more truly terrific, or, in fact, more dangerous, than these same beautiful submarine flower beds, raising their treacherous heads, like the fascinating sirens of old, or the fair and false mermaids of a later epoch. If, by sad fortune, the sailor once gets entangled amongst them, it is too well known that his chance of escape is but small.
They tell a story at Bermuda—‘the still vexed Bermoothes,’—of a boatman who, it was said, lived by these disasters, once going off to an unlucky vessel, fairly caught amongst the coral reefs, like a fly in a cobweb, not far from the North Rock. The wrecker, as he was called, having boarded the bewildered ship, said to the master,
“What will you give me, now, to get you out of this place?”
“Oh, any thing you like—name your sum.”
“Five hundred dollars?”
“Agreed! agreed!” cried the other. Upon which this treacherous pilot ‘kept his promise truly to the ear, but broke it to the hope,’ by taking the vessel out of an abominably bad place, only to fix her in one a great deal more intricate and perilous.
“Now,” said the wrecker to the perplexed and doubly-cheated stranger, “there never was a vessel in this scrape, that was known to get out again; and, indeed, there is but one man alive who knows the passages, or could, by any possibility, extricate you—and that’s me!”
“I suppose,” drily remarked the captain, “that ‘for a consideration’ you would be the man to do me that good service. What say you to another five hundred dollars to put me into clear water, beyond your infernal reefs?”
This hard bargain was soon made; and a winding passage, unseen before, being found, just wide enough, and barely deep enough, for the vessel to pass through, with only six inches to spare under her keel, in half an hour she was once more in blue water, out of soundings, and out of danger.