t
eyes with immense complacency.

Helen, in her alarm, could not resist a smile at this conclusion of so
terrible a demonstration; for, with all their gentle expression, the
tusks of the brute looked formidable. But, when she saw Hazel pushing
them aside, and patting a very small cub on the back, she recovered her
courage completely.

Then he took to his oars again; and aided by the tide, which was now on
the ebb, he rowed round the southwestern extremity of the island. He
found the water here, as he anticipated, very shallow.

It was midday when they were fairly on the southern coast; and now,
sailing with the wind aft, the cutter ran through the water at racing
speed. Fearing that some reefs or rocky formations might exist in their
course, he reduced sail, and kept away from the shore about a mile. At
this distance he was better able to see inland, and mark down the
accident of its formation.

The southern coast was uniform, and Helen said it resembled the cliffs of
the Kentish or Sussex coast of England, only the English white was here
replaced by the pale volcanic gray. By one o'clock they came abreast the
very spot where they had first made land; and, as they judged, due south
of their residence. Had they landed here, a walk of three miles across
the center of the island would have brought them home.

For about a similar distance the coast exhibited monotonous cliffs
unbroken even by a rill. It was plain that the water-shed of the island
was all northward. They now approached the eastern end, where rose the
circular mountain of which mention has been already made. This eminence
had evidently at one time been detached from the rest of the land, to
which it was now joined by a neck of swamp about a mile and a half in
breadth, and two miles in length.

Hazel proposed to reconnoiter this part of the shore nearly, and ran the
boat close in to land. The reeds or canes with which this bog was densely
clothed grew in a dark, spongy soil. Here and there this waste was dotted
with ragged trees which he recognized as the cypress. From its gaunt
branches hung a black, funeral kind of weeper, a kind of moss resembling
iron-gray horse-hair both in texture and uses, though not so long in the
staple.

This parasite, Hazel explained to Helen, was very common in such marshy
ground, and was the death-flag hung out by Nature to warn man that
malaria and fever were the invisible and inalienable inhabitants of that
fatal neighb