h soft
radiance, and dreaming glimmers and pulsating tremors of glory and
sudden errands of fire. Sailor and I stayed up quite late watching the
wonder in which we so spaciously floated, and of the two of us, I am
sure that Sailor knew more than I.

But one thought I had which I am sure was not his, because it was born
of shallower conditions than those with which his instincts have to
deal. I thought: What treasure sunk into the sea by whatsoever lost
ship--galleons piled up and bursting with the gold and silver of Spain,
or strange triangular-sailed boats sailing from Tripoli with the
many-coloured jewels of the east, "ivory, apes, and peacocks"--what
treasure sunk there by man could be compared with the treasure already
stored there by Nature, dropped as out of the dawn and the sunset into
these unvisited waters by the lavish hand of God? What diver could hope
to distinguish among all these glories the peculiar treasures of kings?

We awoke to a dawn that was a rose planted in the sky by the mysterious
hand that seems to love to give the fairest thing the loneliest setting.

But there was no wind, so that day we ran on gasolene. We had some fifty
miles to go to where the narrative pointed, a smaller cay, the cay which
it will be remembered was, according to John Saunders's old map, known
in old days as "Dead Men's Shoes"--but since known by another name
which, for various reasons, I do not deem it politic to divulge--near
the end of the long cay down which we were running.

Tom and I talked it over, and thought that it might be all the better to
take it easy that day and arrive there next morning, when, after a good
night's sleep, we should be more likely to feel rested, and ready to
grapple with whatever we had to face.

So about twilight we dropped anchor in another quiet bay, so much like
that of the night before, as all the bays and cays are along that coast,
that you need to have sailed them from boyhood to know one from another.

The cove we were looking for, known by the cheery name of Dead Men's
Shoes, proved farther off than we expected, so that we didn't come to it
till toward the middle of the next afternoon, an afternoon of the most
innocent gold that has ever thrown its soft radiance over an earth
inhabited for the most part by ruffians and scoundrels.

The soft lapping beauty of its little cove, in such odd contrast to its
sinister name--sunshine on coral sand, and farther inland, the mangrove
tr