trees; he knew those slumbering forest lakes full of torpedo-fish and
swarming with crocodiles; he knew under what a yoke man lives in those
unexplored wildernesses in which are single leaves that exceed a man's
size ten times,--wildernesses swarming with blood-drinking mosquitoes,
tree-leeches, and gigantic poisonous spiders. He had experienced that
forest life himself, had witnessed it, had passed through it; therefore
it gave him the greater enjoyment to look from his height and gaze on
those matos, admire their beauty, and be guarded from their
treacherousness. His tower preserved him from every evil. He left it
only for a few hours on Sunday. He put on then his blue keeper's coat
with silver buttons, and hung his crosses on his breast. His milk-white
head was raised with a certain pride when he heard at the door, while
entering the church, the Creoles say among themselves, "We have an
honorable light-house keeper and not a heretic, though he is a Yankee."
But he returned straightway after Mass to his island, and returned
happy, for he had still no faith in the mainland. On Sunday also he read
the Spanish newspaper which he brought in the town, or the New York
Herald, which he borrowed from Falconbridge; and he sought in it
European news eagerly. The poor old heart on that light-house tower, and
in another hemisphere, was beating yet for its birthplace. At times too,
when the boat brought his daily supplies and water to the island, he
went down from the tower to talk with Johnson, the guard. But after a
while he seemed to grow shy. He ceased to go to the town to read the
papers and to go down to talk politics with Johnson. Whole weeks passed
in this way, so that no one saw him and he saw no one. The only signs
that the old man was living were the disappearance of the provisions
left on shore, and the light of the lantern kindled every evening with
the same regularity with which the sun rose in the morning from the
waters of those regions. Evidently, the old man had become indifferent
to the world. Homesickness was not the cause, but just this,--that even