poetry which was his
native element was piled up at its thickest upon his soul. The unique
island and the endless sea emphasized the thing solely as an epic. There
were no ladies or policemen here to give him a hint either of its farce
or its tragedy.

"Perhaps when the morning stars were made," he said to himself, "God
built this island up from the bottom of the world to be a tower and a
theatre for the fight between yea and nay."

Then he wandered up to the highest level of the rock, where there was a
roof or plateau of level stone. Half an hour afterwards, Turnbull found
him clearing away the loose sand from this table-land and making it
smooth and even.

"We will fight up here, Turnbull," said MacIan, "when the time comes.
And till the time comes this place shall be sacred."

"I thought of having lunch up here," said Turnbull, who had a bottle of
champagne in his hand.

"No, no--not up here," said MacIan, and came down from the height quite
hastily. Before he descended, however, he fixed the two swords upright,
one at each end of the platform, as if they were human sentinels to
guard it under the stars.

Then they came down and lunched plentifully in a nest of loose rocks. In
the same place that night they supped more plentifully still. The smoke
of Mr. Wilkinson's cigars went up ceaseless and strong smelling, like a
pagan sacrifice; the golden glories of Mr. Wilkinson's champagne rose
to their heads and poured out of them in fancies and philosophies. And
occasionally they would look up at the starlight and the rock and see
the space guarded by the two cross-hilted swords, which looked like two
black crosses at either end of a grave.

In this primitive and Homeric truce the week passed by; it consisted
almost entirely of eating, drinking, smoking, talking, and occasionally
singing. They wrote their records and cast loose their bottle. They
never ascended to the ominous plateau; they had never stood there save
for that single embarrassed minute when they had had no time to take
stock of the seascape or the shape of the land. They did not even
explore the island; for MacIan was partly concerned in prayer and
Turnbull entirely concerned with tobacco; and both these forms of
inspiration can be enjoyed by the secluded and even the sedentary. It
was on a golden afternoon, the sun sinking over the sea, rayed like the
very head of Apollo, when Turnbull tossed off the last half-pint from
the emptied Wilkinsonian bot