He glided away. When I emerged on deck the eastern sky was streaked with light. Lawless was on the bridge, Garth at his side.
Silently the captain pointed to the horizon. Away on the port bow a faint grey blur rested lightly on the straight edge of the ocean like a wisp of mist on a lake at dawn.
"Till Monday then!" said Garth as Lawless stepped into the launch.
"To-day week it is, sir!" returned the captain as Carstairs cast him the painter.
"You might fire the gun to let us know you're back," cried the baronet.
Lawless turned to bend over the engine. Then he looked round quickly and grinned.
"Good luck!" he cried, "and good hunting!" and waved a friendly hand. With that he pushed over the lever and with a mighty flurry of propeller and vast bustle among the sea-birds on the foreshore, the _Naomi's_ launch throbbed her way out into the bay towards where, spanning as it seemed the harbour's narrowest part, a creamy band of white spume marked the surf-line. Silently we watched the pretty craft, her paint and brass-work flashing in the morning sun, gliding through the green water. Then Lawless raised an arm in a parting greeting, and the white launch melted into the spume and spray of the open sea.
We stood on a long sloping beach of gleaming white sand shut in on all sides save the sea by lofty grey rocks. Their jagged points out-topped the bright-green fronds of the waving palm-trees which grew almost down to the water's edge. Their column-like appearance, coupled with the singular silence of the island, gave me a sort of solemn feeling, like being in a cathedral.
Some three hundred yards from where the foam-crested rollers beat their thunderous measure on the beach, the ground rose abruptly. The sand ended and became emerged in a tangle of coarse grass. Alternating with a wild and luxuriant undergrowth of a great variety of tree ferns and other plants, it formed a kind of tasselling to a great curtain of greenery which rose, as it seemed, sheer from the sea.
The verdure was so dense that it completely hid the bases of the pointed cliffs which, clustered together like a bundle of faggots, formed the high central part of the island. From some hidden source a clear cold stream of water came plunging down from the cliff, rushing and gurgling until it lost itself in the sea.
