Behind the point, and behind a succeeding mass of enormous rocks piled up by nature in awful disorder as the result of some violent volcanic convulsion, a spacious bay was hollowed out in the coast, bounded on the far side by a perpendicular promontory. This bay furnished an asylum for all kinds of sea-birds, which made the welkin ring with their cries. On the shore huge amphibians snored in the sun, seabears, seals, walruses and others, while countless myriads of graceful nautiluses rode on the surface of the water.
Fritz was not anxious to have any dealings with these formidable sea-monsters in his frail boat. So, pushing out towards the mouth of the bay, he continued his voyage westward.
After rounding a point of singular shape, to which he gave the name of Cape Snub-nose, he entered a natural archway, the foot of whose pillars was washed by the surf. Here there were thousands of swallows, whose nests were plastered to the crannies of the walls and roof. Fritz detached several of these nests, which were of strange construction, and put them in a bag.
"These swallows' nests," said M. Zermatt, interrupting his son's story, "are a very valuable article of commerce in China."
Outside the archway Fritz found another bay, contained between two capes situated about four miles apart. These were linked together, so to speak, by a sprinkling of reefs with an opening only wide enough to permit the passage of a ship of three or four hundred tons at most.
Behind the bay, as far as eye could see, rolled broad savannahs watered by clear streams, woods, marshes, and landscapes of every variety. The bay itself held treasure of inexhaustible value in the shape of pearl oysters, some magnificent samples of which Fritz brought back with him.
After partly rounding the inside of the bay, and crossing the mouth of a river teeming with aquatic plants of every kind, the canoe reached the promontory opposite the archway.
Fritz then decided that he must not carry his expedition any further. The hour was getting late, so he resumed his course to the coast, making for False Hope Point, which he rounded before the gun on Shark's Island had been fired.
This was the story the young man told of the voyage which resulted in the discovery of Pearl Bay. But when he was alone with M. Zermatt, he amazed his father by telling him more in confidence.
Among the countless birds which wheeled and wound above the promontory—sea-swallows, sea-gulls and frigate-birds—there were also several pairs of albatrosses, one of which Fritz knocked down with a blow from his boat-hook.