. He would have pushed his acquaintance still nearer,
but as his boat rounded the point, with one accord they all scuttled
away like frightened sandpipers. Pomfrey, on his return, asked his
Indian retainer if they could swim. "Oh, yes!" "As far as the rock?"
"Yes." Yet Pomfrey was not satisfied. The color of his strange
apparition remained unaccounted for, and it was not that of an Indian
woman.

Trifling events linger long in a monotonous existence, and it was nearly
a week before Pomfrey gave up his daily telescopic inspection of the
rock. Then he fell back upon his books again, and, oddly enough, upon
another volume of voyages, and so chanced upon the account of Sir
Francis Drake's occupation of the bay before him. He had always thought
it strange that the great adventurer had left no trace or sign of
his sojourn there; still stranger that he should have overlooked the
presence of gold, known even to the Indians themselves, and have lost
a discovery far beyond his wildest dreams and a treasure to which the
cargoes of those Philippine galleons he had more or less successfully
intercepted were trifles. Had the restless explorer been content to pace
those dreary sands during three weeks of inactivity, with no thought of
penetrating the inland forests behind the range, or of even entering the
nobler bay beyond? Or was the location of the spot a mere tradition as
wild and unsupported as the "marvells" of the other volume? Pomfrey had
the skepticism of the scientific, inquiring mind.

Two weeks had passed and he was returning from a long climb inland, when
he stopped to rest in his descent to the sea. The panorama of the
shore was before him, from its uttermost limit to the lighthouse on the
northern point. The sun was still one hour high, it would take him
about that time to reach home. But from this coign of vantage he could
see--what he had not before observed--that what he had always believed
was a little cove on the northern shore was really the estuary of a
small stream which rose near him and eventually descended into the ocean
at that point. He could also see that beside it was a long low erection
of some kind, covered with thatched brush, which looked like a "barrow,"
yet showed signs of habitation in the slight smoke that rose from it and
drifted inland. It was not far out of his way, and he resolved to return
in that direction. On his way down he once or twice heard the barking
of an Indian dog, and knew that h