eliverance. I was, at least, so sunk in
sadness that I scarce remarked where I was going; and chance (or some
finer sense that lives in us, and only guides us when the mind is in
abeyance) conducted my steps into a quarter of the island where the
birds were few. By some devious route, which I was unable to retrace
for my return, I was thus able to mount, without interruption, to the
highest point of land. And here I was recalled to consciousness by a
last discovery.

The spot on which I stood was level, and commanded a wide view of the
lagoon, the bounding reef, the round horizon. Nearer hand I saw the
sister islet, the wreck, the Norah Creina, and the Norah's boat already
moving shoreward. For the sun was now low, flaming on the sea's verge;
and the galley chimney smoked on board the schooner.

It thus befell that though my discovery was both affecting and
suggestive, I had no leisure to examine further. What I saw was the
blackened embers of fire of wreck. By all the signs, it must have blazed
to a good height and burned for days; from the scantling of a spar that
lay upon the margin only half consumed, it must have been the work of
more than one; and I received at once the image of a forlorn troop of
castaways, houseless in that lost corner of the earth, and feeding there
their fire of signal. The next moment a hail reached me from the boat;
and bursting through the bushes and the rising sea-fowl, I said farewell
(I trust for ever) to that desert isle.

CHAPTER XVI. IN WHICH I TURN SMUGGLER, AND THE CAPTAIN CASUIST

The last night at Midway, I had little sleep; the next morning, after
the sun was risen, and the clatter of departure had begun to reign on
deck, I lay a long while dozing; and when at last I stepped from the
companion, the schooner was already leaping through the pass into the
open sea. Close on her board, the huge scroll of a breaker unfurled
itself along the reef with a prodigious clamour; and behind I saw the
wreck vomiting into the morning air a coil of smoke. The wreaths already
blew out far to leeward, flames already glittered in the cabin skylight;
and the sea-fowl were scattered in surprise as wide as the lagoon. As
we drew farther off, the conflagration of the Flying Scud flamed higher;
and long after we had dropped all signs of Midway Island, the smoke
still hung in the horizon like that of a distant steamer. With the
fading out of that last vestige, the Norah Creina, passed again in