At once the bud set to work. It drove an anchor-root into the
reef, then other roots and still others. It shot up to the
height of a foot or two, and thence sent thick red-brown roots
straight downward into the coral again.

And so on, until it had formed a tangled root-fence for many
yards alongshore. After which, its work being done, the
mangrove proceeded to grow upward into a big and glossy-leaved
shade-tree, making buds for further fences.

Meanwhile, every particle of floating seaweed, every dead fish
or animal, all vegetation, etc., which chanced to wash into
that fence-tangle, stayed there. It is easier for matter, as
well as for man, to get entangled in mangrove roots than to
get out again.

The sun and the rain did their work on this decaying stuff.
Thus, soil was formed, atop the coral and in the hollows
scooped out of its surface by wind or tide.

Presently, a coconut, hurled from its stem in the Bahamas or
in Cuba, by a hurricane, set its palmleaf sail-sprout and was
gale-driven across the intervening seas, floating ashore on
the new-risen land. There it sprouted. Birds, winds, waves,
brought germs of other trees. The subtropical island was
complete.

Island, key, reef--reef, key, island--with the intervening
gaps of azure-emerald water, bridged, bit by bit, by the
coral,--to-day a sea-surface, to-morrow a gray-white reef,