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There seemed no encircling reef, just a line of reef here and there, beyond which lay topaz and aquamarine sheets of water bathing the feet of the great black cliffs of Motul.

“Ain’t a place I’d choose for a lee shore,” said Billy, “but this canoe don’t draw more than a piedish, and I reckon we can get her in most anywhere across the reefs. Question is where do them cliffs break?”

They kept a bit more to the south, and there sure enough was the big break where the cliffs seem smashed with an axe and where the deep water comes in, piercing the land so that you might anchor a battleship so close that the wild cliff-hanging convolvulus could brush its truck and fighting tops.

“We can’t make it before dark,” said Billy.

“Don’t matter,” said Davis.

It didn’t; although the moon had not risen, the stars lit Motul and the great dark harbour that pierces the land like a sword.

The breeze had almost fallen dead as they came in, nothing but the sea spoke, breaking on the rocks and lipping up the cliffs, where screw pines clung and the great datura trumpets blew in the silver light.