So all night, lest wind or resolve should fail next day, he sailed. How to
tell just where dawn found him I scarcely know.

Somewhere in that blue wilderness, with no other shore in sight, yet not
over three miles northeast of a "pass" between two long tide-covered sand-
reefs, a ferment of delta silt--if science guesses right--had lifted
higher than most of the islands behind it in the sunken west one mere
islet in the shape of a broad crescent, with its outward curve to seaward
and a deep, slender lagoon on the landward side filling the whole length
of its bight. About half the island was flat and was covered with those
strong marsh grasses for which you've seen cattle, on the mainland,
venture so hungrily into the deep ooze. The rest, the southern half, rose
in dazzling white dunes twenty feet or more in height and dappled green
with patches of ragged sod and thin groups of dwarfed and wind-flattened
shrubs. As the sun rose, Sweetheart and her sailor glided through a gap in
the sand reef that closed the lagoon in, luffed, and as a great cloud of
nesting pelicans rose from their dirty town on the flats, ran softly upon
the inner sands, where a rillet, a mere thread of sweet water, trickled
across the white beach. Here he waded ashore with the utensils and
provisions, made a fire, washed down a hot breakfast of bacon and pone
with a pint of black coffee, returned to his boat and slept until
afternoon. Wakened at length by the canting of the sloop with the fall of
the tide, he rose, rekindled his fire, cooked and ate again, smoked two
pipes, and then, idly shouldering his gun, made a long half-circuit of the
beach to south and eastward, mounted the highest dune and gazed far and
wide.

Nowhere on sand or sea under the illimitable dome was there sign of human