For myself, however, I did but exchange anxieties. I
was no sooner out of one fear than I fell upon another;
no sooner secure that I should myself make the intended
haven, than I began to be convinced that Trent was
there before me. I climbed into the rigging, stood on
the board, and eagerly scanned that ring of coral reef
and bursting breaker, and the blue lagoon which they
enclosed. The two islets within began to show plainly-
-Middle Brooks and Lower Brooks Island, the Directory
named them: two low, bush-covered, rolling strips of
sand, each with glittering beaches, each perhaps a mile
or a mile and a half in length, running east and west,
and divided by a narrow channel. Over these,
innumerable as maggots, there hovered, chattered, and
screamed millions of twinkling sea-birds; white and
black; the black by far the largest. With singular
scintillations, this vortex of winged life swayed to
and fro in the strong sunshine, whirled continually
through itself, and would now and again burst asunder
and scatter as wide as the lagoon: so that I was
irresistibly reminded of what I had read of nebular
convulsions.
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