Mr Griffiths, who had been there before, took the boat inside a high reef of rocks, where he had, he said, caught a number of fish.
Our first object was to obtain bait. Miles Soper and Coal undertook to swim on shore with baskets and catch some crabs, for which the fish in these seas seem to have a special fondness. We pulled in as close as we could to land them, and in a short time they filled their baskets, and shouted to us to return and take them off. We now dropped our kedge anchor just inside the surf, in between two and three fathoms of water, which was so clear that we could see the fish as they swam about, darted at the bait, and swallowed the hooks.
We quickly hauled in a number of magnificent fish. We were so eager at the sport that we didn’t consider how rapidly the time passed, while the doctor was more occupied with admiring the variously-coloured coral, the richly-tinted seaweeds, and the curiously-shaped fish of all the hues of the rainbow, swimming in and out among the trees of their marine gardens.
At last Mr Griffiths, pulling out his watch, exclaimed, “Hulloa! How time has gone by! Get up the anchor, lads. We ought to be off.”
The order was more easily given than obeyed. We hauled and hauled, but the anchor had got foul of the coral, and we ran a risk of losing it. Soper offered to go down and clear it, but just then a huge shark showed his ugly throat alongside, and Mr Griffiths would not let him go. At last, just as it was dark, Brown managed to get the anchor up.
When we pulled outside the reef we found that the weather had changed. It was blowing very hard, though, sheltered as we had been, we had not discovered this. We looked eagerly out for the ship, but she was nowhere to be seen.