"The king's son have I landed by himself;
Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs
In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting,
His arms in this sad knot."

_Tempest._


Having completed this first examination of the crater, Mark and Bob next
picked their way again to the summit of its wall, and took their seats
directly over the arch. Here they enjoyed as good a look-out as the
little island afforded, not only of its own surface, but of the
surrounding ocean. Mark now began to comprehend the character of the
singular geological formation, into the midst of which the Rancocus had
been led, as it might almost be by the hand of Providence itself. He was
at that moment seated on the topmost pinnacle of a submarine mountain of
volcanic origin--submarine as to all its elevations, heights and spaces,
with the exception of the crater where he had just taken his stand, and
the little bit of visible and venerable lava, by which it was
surrounded. It is true that this lava rose very near the surface of the
ocean, in fifty places that he could see at no great distance, forming
the numberless breakers that characterized the place; but, with the
exception of Mark's Reef, as Bob named the principal island on the spot,
two or three detached islets within a cable's-length of it, and a few
little more remote, the particular haunts of birds, no other land was
visible, far or near.

As Mark sat there, on that rock of concrete ashes, he speculated on the
probable extent of the shoals and reefs by which he was surrounded.