ed, getting on his feet and shaking himself with a
characteristic gesture, as though to shake out the horror and the
mystery, "let us leave the problem till to-morrow and enjoy this wind
and sea and stars. I've been living lately in the atmosphere of many
people, and feel that I want to wash and be clean. I propose a swim and
then bed. Who'll second me?" And two minutes later we were all diving
from the boat into cool, deep water, that reflected a thousand moons as
the waves broke away from us in countless ripples.

We slept in blankets under the open sky, Sangree and I taking the
outside places, and were up before sunrise to catch the dawn wind.
Helped by this early start we were half-way home by noon, and then the
wind shifted to a few points behind us so that we fairly ran. In and out
among a thousand islands, down narrow channels where we lost the wind,
out into open spaces where we had to take in a reef, racing along under
a hot and cloudless sky, we flew through the very heart of the
bewildering and lonely scenery.

"A real wilderness," cried Dr. Silence from his seat in the bows where
he held the jib sheet. His hat was off, his hair tumbled in the wind,
and his lean brown face gave him the touch of an Oriental. Presently he
changed places with Sangree, and came down to talk with me by the
tiller.

"A wonderful region, all this world of islands," he said, waving his
hand to the scenery rushing past us, "but doesn't it strike you there's
something lacking?"

"It's--hard," I answered, after a moment's reflection. "It has a
superficial, glittering prettiness, without--" I hesitated to find the
word I wanted.

John Silence nodded his head with approval.

"Exactly," he said. "The picturesqueness of stage scenery that is not
real, not alive. It's like a landscape by a clever painter, yet without
true imagination. Soulless--that's the word you wanted."

"Something like that," I answered, watching the gusts of wind on the
sails. "Not dead so much, as without soul. That's it."

"Of course," he went on, in a voice calculated, it seemed to me, not to
reach our companion in the bows, "to live long in a place like
this--long and alone--might bring about a strange result in some men."

I suddenly realised he was talking with a purpose and pricked up my
ears.

"There's no life here. These islands are mere dead rocks pushed up from
below the sea--not living land; and there's nothing really alive on
them. Even the sea