We were like
awakened Rip Van Winkles, and it seemed to us that we were dreaming.
On one side the azure sea lapped across the horizon into the azure
sky; on the other side the sea lifted itself into great breakers of
emerald that fell in a snowy smother upon a white coral beach.
Beyond the beach, green plantations of sugar-cane undulated gently
upward to steeper slopes, which, in turn, became jagged volcanic
crests, drenched with tropic showers and capped by stupendous masses
of trade-wind clouds. At any rate, it was a most beautiful dream.
The Snark turned and headed directly in toward the emerald surf,
till it lifted and thundered on either hand; and on either hand,
scarce a biscuit-toss away, the reef showed its long teeth, pale
green and menacing.
Abruptly the land itself, in a riot of olive-greens of a thousand
hues, reached out its arms and folded the Snark in. There was no
perilous passage through the reef, no emerald surf and azure sea -
nothing but a warm soft land, a motionless lagoon, and tiny beaches
on which swam dark-skinned tropic children. The sea had
disappeared. The Snark's anchor rumbled the chain through the
hawse-pipe, and we lay without movement on a "lineless, level
floor." It was all so beautiful and strange that we could not
accept it as real. On the chart this place was called Pearl
Harbour, but we called it Dream Harbour.
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