Christmas on the Briny, The Innocents Abroad. W. Bede Christie

again went out to the slaves of Carolina. Under the influence of the rising breeze our boat danced merrily through the waves until Nicholas, who had mounted the masthead, said he could hear the distant roll of the breakers as they broke over the coral-capped reefs of the Abrolhos, and we must lay the boat to for the night. The boat was thrown up into the wind, and everything made safe as the new moon sank beneath the horizon, and under the splashing music of the waters we rolled into our rugs and were lulled into that soft slumber which was only disturbed by the hardness of the deck on which we lay. An occasional “Ough—h—h” or “Ach—h—” smote dreamily on our ears, telling us that some, at least, of our party did not trouble particularly whether the ducks came home or the cows laid.

      Thus was our Christmas spent. “Coffee!” shouted Miles at about five o’clock, and we roused up to find the boat slightly careening under a pleasant breeze, which was blowing us along at about six or seven knots. We had drifted a good way back and northerly during the night, and it was not till near ten o’clock, before we sighted Goss Island, the most easterly of the middle group of the Abrolhos—a low, sandy spit, rising only a few feet above the surrounding waters. Our unaccustomed eyes could not distinguish it from the crested foam of a rolling wave till long after our watchful skipper pointed it out to us, and told us he was on the look-out for a beacon-pole which was erected on its shore.

      Passing this island at a respectful distance, so as to keep well away from its outlying reefs, the Wallaby and Pigeon Islands hove in view, and, entering the channel which lay between them, sailed up to a sheltered cove, which afforded good anchorage, and dropped anchor at about noon, having been thirty-six on a journey which with a moderate breeze would have occupied about eight.