“Why, the island you talked about.”
“Well, I don’t say that is it, because I want to make an observation first, but I feel pretty sure that it is the place.”
“But that looks so little.”
“It’s a little island.”
“Yes, but that looks so very small.”
“So would you seem small if you were thirty or forty miles away,” said the captain, taking the glass and having another good long look. “The air is very clear this morning, and the island looms up. But we shall see better by and by.”
They had been steadily sailing east for some days, and land had been sighted several times since. Jack had stood gazing longingly over the starboard rail at the tops of the Java volcanoes, which had followed one another in succession, some with the clouds hanging round their sides and their peaks clear, but two with what looked in the distance like tiny threads of smoke rising from their summits, and spreading out into a top like a mushroom.
This long island had tempted him strongly, and he had suggested to his father that they should make a halt there, but Sir John and the doctor both shook their heads.
“No,” said the latter, “I vote against it. I believe Java to be a very interesting country, but for our purpose it is spoiled.”
“Yes,” said Sir John; “we don’t want to get to a place full of plantations and farms; we want an out-of-the-way spot where the naturalist and traveller have not run riot over the land; where Nature is wild and untamed.”