with reinforcements from the marshes, moved solemnly upon the hills. Ten
minutes more and the landscape was utterly blotted out; simultaneously
the wind died away, and a death-like silence stole over sea and shore.
The faint clang, high overhead, of unseen brent, the nearer call of
invisible plover, the lap and wash of undistinguishable waters, and the
monotonous roll of the vanished ocean, were the only sounds. As night
deepened, the far-off booming of the fog-bell on the headland at
intervals stirred the thick air.

Hard by the shore of the bay, and half hidden by a drifting sand-hill,
stood a low nondescript structure, to whose composition sea and shore
had equally contributed. It was built partly of logs and partly of
driftwood and tarred canvas. Joined to one end of the main building--the
ordinary log-cabin of the settler--was the half-round pilot-house of
some wrecked steamer, while the other gable terminated in half of a
broken whale-boat. Nailed against the boat were the dried skins of wild
animals, and scattered about lay the flotsam and jetsam of many years'
gathering,--bamboo crates, casks, hatches, blocks, oars, boxes, part of
a whale's vertebrae, and the blades of sword-fish. Drawn up on the beach
of a little cove before the house lay a canoe. As the night thickened
and the fog grew more dense, these details grew imperceptible, and only
the windows of the pilot-house, lit up by a roaring fire within the hut,
gleamed redly through the mist.

By this fire, beneath a ship's lamp that swung from the roof, two
figures were seated, a man and a woman. The man, broad-shouldered and
heavily bearded, stretched his listless powerful length beyond a broken
bamboo chair, with his eyes fixed on the fire. The woman crouched
cross-legged upon the broad earthen hearth, with her eyes blinkingly
fixed on her companion. They were small, black, round, berry-like eyes,