CHAP. III.] BAHIA TO THE CAPE. 149 



it is really very difficult to believe that one is not watching a 

 shoal of fish pursued by enemies. 



In the water, penguins are usually silent, but. now and then 

 one raises its head and emits a curious, prolonged croak, start- 

 lingly like one of the deej)er tones of the human voice. One 

 rarely observes it in the daylight and in the midst of other 

 noises, but at night it is weird enough ; and the lonely officer of 

 the middle watch, whose thoughts may have wandered for the 

 moment from the imminent iceberg back to some more genial 

 memory, is often pulled up with a start by that gruff " whaat " 

 along-side in the darkness, close below the bridge. 



The structure of this island is very much the same as that 

 of Tristan, only that the pre-eminent feature of the latter, the 

 snowy cone, is wanting. A wall of volcanic rocks, about the 

 same height as the cliff at Tristan, and which one is inclined to 

 believe to have been at one time continuous with it, entirely 

 surrounds Inaccessible Island, falling for the most part sheer 

 into the sea, and it seems that it slopes sufficiently to allow a 

 tolerably easy ascent to the plateau on the top at one point 

 only. 



There is a shallow bay, in which the ship anchored in fifteen 

 fathoms, on the east side of the island ; and there, as in Tristan, 

 a narrow belt of low ground extending for about a mile along 

 the shore is interposed between the cliff and the sea. A pretty 

 water-fall tossed itself down about the middle of the bay over 

 the cliff from the plateau above. A little way down it was 

 nearly lost in spray, like the Staubbach, and collected itself 

 again into a rivulet, where it regained the rock at a lower level. 

 A hut built of stones and clay, and roofed with spars and thatch, 

 lay in a little hollow near the water-fall ; and the two Germans, 

 in excellent health and spirits, but enraptured at the sight of 

 the ship and longing for a passage anywhere out of the island, 

 were down on the beach waiting for the first boat. Their story 

 is a curious one ; and as Captain Nares agreed to take them to 



