The gentlemen lunched and the men dined, and the afternoon was spent in gazing at the wonders of sea and shore. Shoals of silvery and golden fish, startled by the vessel, leaped out of the water and darted in all directions; a shark showed its back fin now and then, and twice over droves of pigs started up out of the hot sand to make for cover. But still there was no sign of inhabitant or opening in the reef, while scores of tempting places were passed, all inviting to a naturalist, and above all to Jack; vistas among the trees took his attention, and valleys rising upward toward the higher parts of the mountain.
Upon one of these occasions, when he was sitting back in a deck-chair, sweeping the side of the mountain with his glass, the doctor came up behind him.
“Looking at the mountain?” he said.
“Yes; couldn’t we get up there?”
“I vote we try,” said the doctor. “Will you come?”
“Yes,” cried Jack eagerly; “but we couldn’t land and start now.”
“Hardly,” said the doctor, laughing. “We should have to start at daybreak.”
“What, to get up a little way like that?”
“Yes, to get up that little way,” said the doctor, with a queer twinkle of the eye. “Well, we don’t seem to see anything likely to hinder our landing to-morrow and having a good time at collecting. We must soon get round to our starting-place. Let’s ask the captain how far we have come.”
“Roughly speaking, nearly fifty knots,” said the captain. “It’s getting well on toward six bells now, and we’ve been coming at a fair speed, and are going a bit faster. I want to reach the anchorage before dark.”