suggestive, I had no leisure to examine further. What I saw was the
blackened embers of fire of wreck. By all the signs, it must have blazed
to a good height and burned for days; from the scantling of a spar that
lay upon the margin only half consumed, it must have been the work of
more than one; and I received at once the image of a forlorn troop of
castaways, houseless in that lost corner of the earth, and feeding there
their fire of signal. The next moment a hail reached me from the boat;
and bursting through the bushes and the rising sea-fowl, I said farewell
(I trust for ever) to that desert isle.




CHAPTER XVI. IN WHICH I TURN SMUGGLER, AND THE CAPTAIN CASUIST


The last night at Midway, I had little sleep; the next morning, after
the sun was risen, and the clatter of departure had begun to reign on
deck, I lay a long while dozing; and when at last I stepped from the
companion, the schooner was already leaping through the pass into the
open sea. Close on her board, the huge scroll of a breaker unfurled
itself along the reef with a prodigious clamour; and behind I saw the
wreck vomiting into the morning air a coil of smoke. The wreaths already
blew out far to leeward, flames already glittered in the cabin skylight;
and the sea-fowl were scattered in surprise as wide as the lagoon. As
we drew farther off, the conflagration of the Flying Scud flamed higher;
and long after we had dropped all signs of Midway Island, the smoke
still hung in the horizon like that of a distant steamer. With the
fading out of that last vestige, the Norah Creina, passed again into the
empty world of cloud and water by which she had approached; and the next