s
sky-kissed, whose vales were overshadowed by festoons of vapor, whose
heights were tipped with sunshine, and along whose shore the sea sang
softly, and the creaming breakers wreathed themselves, flashed like
snow-drifts, vanished and flashed again. The sea danced and sparkled;
the air quivered with vibrant light. Along the border of that island the
palm-trees towered and reeled, and all its gardens breathed perfume such
as I had never known or dreamed of.

For a few hours only we basked in its beauty, rejoiced in it, gloried in
it; and then we passed it by. Even as it had risen from the sea it
returned into its bosom and was seen no more. Twilight stole in between
us, and the night blotted it out forever. Forever?

I wonder what island it was? A pearl of the Antilles, surely; but its
name and fame, its history and mystery are lost to me. Its memory lives
and is as green as ever. No wintry blasts visit it; even the rich dyes
of autumn do not discolor it. It is perennial in its rare beauty,
unfading, unforgotten, unforgettable; a thing immutable, immemorial--I
had almost said immortal.

Whence it came and whither it has gone I know not. It had its rising and
its setting; its day from dawn to dusk was perfect. Doubtless there are
those whose lives have been passed within its tranquil shade: from
generation to generation it has known all that they have known of joy or
sorrow. All the world that they have knowledge of has been compassed by
the far blue rim of the horizon. That sky-piercing peak was ever the
centre of their universe, and the wandering sea-bird has outflown their
thoughts.

All this came to me as a child, when the first island "swam into my
ken." It was a great discovery--a revelation. Of it were born all the
islands that have been so much to me in later life. And even then I
seemed to comprehend the singular life that all islanders are forced to
live: the independence of that life--for a man's island is his fortress,
girded about with the fathomless moat of the sea; and the dependence of
it--for what is that island but an atom dotting watery space and so
easily cut off from communication with the world at large? Drought may
visit the islander, and he may be starved; the tornado may desolate his
shore; fever and famine and thirst may lie in wait for him; sickness and
sorrow and death abide with him. Thus is he dependent in his
independence.

And he is insecluded in his seclusion, for he can not escape