“An island!” cries my uncle.

“That’s not an island!” I cried sceptically.

“It’s nothing else,” shouted the Professor, with a loud laugh.

“But that column of water?”

“ Geysir ,” said Hans.

“No doubt it is a geyser, like those in Iceland.”

At first I protest against being so widely mistaken as to have taken an island for a marine monster. But the evidence is against me, and I have to confess my error. It is nothing worse than a natural phenomenon.