As to the volcanic chimney which established a communication between the subterranean layers and the crater, its depth could not be calculated with the eye, for it was lost in obscurity. But there was no doubt as to the complete extinction of the volcano.
Before eight o’clock Harding and his companions were assembled at the summit of the crater, on a conical mound which swelled the northern edge.
“The sea, the sea everywhere!” they cried, as if their lips could not restrain the words which made islanders of them.
The sea, indeed, formed an immense circular sheet of water all around them! Perhaps, on climbing again to the summit of the cone, Cyrus Harding had had a hope of discovering some coast, some island shore, which he had not been able to perceive in the dark the evening before. But nothing appeared on the farthest verge of the horizon, that is to say over a radius of more than fifty miles. No land in sight. Not a sail. Over all this immense space the ocean alone was visible—the island occupied the center of a circumference which appeared to be infinite.
The engineer and his companions, mute and motionless, surveyed for some minutes every point of the ocean, examining it to its most extreme limits. Even Pencroft, who possessed a marvelous power of sight, saw nothing; and certainly if there had been land at the horizon, if it appeared only as an indistinct vapor, the sailor would undoubtedly have found it out, for nature had placed regular telescopes under his eyebrows.
From the ocean their gaze returned to the island which they commanded entirely, and the first question was put by Gideon Spilett in these terms:
“About what size is this island?”
Truly, it did not appear large in the midst of the immense ocean.
Cyrus Harding reflected a few minutes; he attentively observed the perimeter of the island, taking into consideration the height at which he was placed; then,—
“My friends,” said he, “I do not think I am mistaken in giving to the shore of the island a circumference of more than a hundred miles.”