house. Skavinski threw to them generally the remnants of his food; and
soon they grew tame, and afterward, when he fed them, a real storm of
white wings encircled him, and the old man went among the birds like a
shepherd among sheep. When the tide ebbed he went to the low sand-banks,
on which he collected savory periwinkles and beautiful pearl shells of
the nautilus, which receding waves had left on the sand. In the night by
the moonlight and the tower he went to catch fish, which frequented the
windings of the cliff in myriads. At last he was in love with his rocks
and his treeless little island, grown over only with small thick plants
exuding sticky resin. The distant views repaid him for the poverty of
the island, however. During afternoon hours, when the air became very
clear he could see the whole isthmus covered with the richest
vegetation. It seemed to Skavinski at such times that he saw one
gigantic garden,--bunches of cocoa, and enormous musa, combined as it
were in luxurious tufted bouquets, right there behind the houses of
Aspinwall. Farther on, between Aspinwall and Panama, was a great forest
over which every morning and evening hung a reddish haze of
exhalations,--a real tropical forest with its feet in stagnant water,
interlaced with lianas and filled with the sound of one sea of gigantic
orchids, palms, milk-trees, iron-trees, gum-trees.

Through his field-glass the old man could see not only trees and the
broad leaves of bananas, but even legions of monkeys and great marabous
and flocks of parrots, rising at times like a rainbow cloud over the
forest. Skavinski knew such forests well, for after being wrecked on the
Amazon he had wandered whole weeks among similar arches and thickets. He
had seen how many dangers and deaths lie concealed under those wonderful
and smiling exteriors. During the nights which he had spent in them he
heard close at hand the sepulchral voices of howling monkeys and the
roaring of the jaguars; he saw gigantic serpents coiled like lianas on