There was but little sign of an abatement or change in the weather. I felt curious to know if my buoy still held, and as there was yet time before dark to go up to the north cape by way of the beach and return, I called Duke and started along the strand. About half-way there we came upon the carcass of a magnificent silver-sided tarpon,--a huge fish somewhat like a sea-bass,--that would have weighed probably two hundred pounds. It was dead when cast ashore, and so of course unfit for food. A flock of gulls were quarrelling and fighting over it, and as we approached they arose and filled the air in a great cloud. After we passed by they circled around, wind-buffeted, and settled again on their food, covering the beach, and hovering in a seething, hungry, struggling crowd about the fish, which must have been a rare feast for them.
I picked up a beautiful and perfect specimen of the fragile shell of the pearly nautilus, thin as paper, fluted and corrugated with lovely regularity, and tinted like the shaded petals of a blush rose. Rarely beautiful, divinely perfect, this sample of nature’s handiwork, cast up by the foaming, angry breakers amid the brown tangle of the shore and the foul-smelling ocean-weeds, seemed like a poem, a hymn in praise of nature’s God. I put the delicate and perfect structure carefully in my bosom to carry away as a memento of my island home.
We reached the cape, and I clambered up the highest rock from which I could obtain a clear outlook, and found my buoy all right, rising and falling with the swell, now submerged, and now reappearing, evidently tugging at its anchor-rope, and securely held thereby.
I thought how peacefully slept the ancient hulk beneath all this turbulence. Undisturbed by wind or wave it lay there slowly changing its tough timbers of Andalusian oak back into the elements from which they sprang. I thought, too, of the indestructible gold that lay buried there, waiting the fulness of time for its reappearance in the active life of man; how long the years had been since it had felt the grip of avarice or slid freely from the fingers of charity.
Suddenly I saw away upon the rim of the sea in the northeast, in the very eye of the wind, the white glint of a small sail. The mist, the waves, and the changing rain hid it momently, and then it would gleam out again a white spark among the gray. I watched it intently for a quarter of an hour, and made out that it must be a small schooner-rigged boat hove to with jib and close reefed mainsail, drifting bodily before the wind, and rolling in a frightful manner. The mainmast had been broken off at the top, and on the foremast, half-masted, fluttered a red flag. I made out clearly, presently, that the craft was merely a half-decked boat similar to my own, though perhaps of somewhat larger size, and I thought I could see somebody on board, but could not distinguish clearly. But of course, if it was hove to, there would be some one on board, as such a condition of the canvas would not be likely to occur by accident in a boat fortuitously adrift. If the wind held in the present quarter, the boat was certain to drift on to the island, and that too in a short time. It would not take above two hours and a half for it to reach the breakers, unless it could run before the wind and thus make a course to avoid the island. Very soon indeed, the island would be a lee shore, and an exceedingly dangerous one. I marvelled greatly that they did not seem to see this danger.