This unpromising appearance induced me to propose that we should continue our course to Rio Janeiro.  The men were of another opinion.  They said they had been too long afloat, cooped up, and that they should prefer remaining on the island to risking their lives any longer, in so frail a boat, on the wide ocean.  We were still debating, when we came to a small spot of sand, on which we discovered two wild hogs, which we conjectured had come down to feed on the shell fish; this decided them, and I consented to run to leeward of the island, and seek for a landing-place.  We sounded the west end, following the remarks of Horseberg, and ran for the cove of the Nine-Pin Rock.  As we opened it, a scene of grandeur presented itself, which we had never met with before, and which in its kind is probably unrivalled in nature.  An enormous rock rose, nearly perpendicularly, out of the sea, to the height of nine hundred or one thousand feet.  It was as narrow at the base as it was at the top, and was formed exactly in the shape of the nine-pin, from which, it derives its name.  The sides appeared smooth and even to the top, which was covered with verdure, and was so far above us that the sea birds, which in myriads screamed around it, were scarcely visible two-thirds of the way up.  The sea beat violently against its base—­the feathered tribe, in endless variety, had been for ages the undisturbed tenants of this natural monument; all its jutting points and little projections were covered with their white dung, and it seemed to me a wonderful effort of Nature, which had placed this mass in the position which it held, in spite of the utmost efforts of the winds and waves of the wide ocean.

Another curious phenomenon appeared at the other end of the cove.  The lava had poured down into the sea, and formed a stratum; a second river of fused rock had poured again over the first, and had cooled so rapidly as to hang suspended, not having joined the former strata, but leaving a vacuum between for the water to fill up.  The sea dashed violently between the two beds, and spouted magnificently through holes in the upper bed of lava to the height of sixty feet, resembling much the spouting of a whale, but with a noise and force infinitely greater.  The sound indeed was tremendous, hollow, and awful.  I could not help mentally adoring the works of the Creator, and my heart sunk within me at my own insignificance, folly, and wickedness.

As we were now running along the shore, looking for our landing-place, and just going to take in the sail, the American captain, who sat close to the man at the helm, seemed attentively watching something on the larboard bow of the boat.  In an instant he exclaimed, “Put your helm, my good fellow, port-hard.”  These words he accompanied with a push of the helm so violent, as almost to throw the man overboard who sat on the larboard quarter.  At the same moment, a heavy sea lifted the boat, and sent her many yards