tle, hurled the bottle into the sea with
objectless energy, and went up to where his sword stood waiting for him
on the hill. MacIan was already standing heavily by his with bent head
and eyes reading the ground. He had not even troubled to throw a glance
round the island or the horizon. But Turnbull being of a more active
and birdlike type of mind did throw a glance round the scene. The
consequence of which was that he nearly fell off the rock.

On three sides of this shelly and sandy islet the sea stretched blue and
infinite without a speck of land or sail; the same as Turnbull had first
seen it, except that the tide being out it showed a few yards more of
slanting sand under the roots of the rocks. But on the fourth side the
island exhibited a more extraordinary feature. In fact, it exhibited
the extraordinary feature of not being an island at all. A long, curving
neck of sand, as smooth and wet as the neck of the sea serpent, ran
out into the sea and joined their rock to a line of low, billowing, and
glistening sand-hills, which the sinking sea had just bared to the sun.
Whether they were firm sand or quicksand it was difficult to guess; but
there was at least no doubt that they lay on the edge of some larger
land; for colourless hills appeared faintly behind them and no sea could
be seen beyond.

"Sakes alive!" cried Turnbull, with rolling eyes; "this ain't an island
in the Atlantic. We've butted the bally continent of America."

MacIan turned his head, and his face, already pale, grew a shade paler.
He was by this time walking in a world of omens and hieroglyphics, and
he could not read anything but what was baffling or menacing in this
brown gigantic arm of the earth stretched out into the sea to seize him.

"MacIan," said Turnbull, in his temperate way, "whatever our eternal
interrupted tete-a-tetes have taught us or not taught us, at least we
need not fear the charge of fear. If it is essential to your emotions,
I will cheerfully finish the fight here and now; but I must confess that
if you kill me here I shall die with my curiosity highly excited and
unsatisfied upon a minor point of geography."

"I do not want to stop now," said the other, in his elephantine
simplicity, "but we must stop for a moment, because it is a
sign--perhaps it is a miracle. We must see what is at the end of the
road of sand; it may be a bridge built across the gulf by God."

"So long as you gratify my query," said Turnbull, laughi