of air like crystal translucent and motionless, the
world seemed more close-knitted and sane. What yesterday's veiling of
haze had concealed was now bold and near. In the north the lighthouse
stood like a horn on the brow of the headland, the lamp continuing to
flash even though its light was darkened, its beams out-stripped by the
radiant forerunners of the sun. Beyond it, over a breadth of water
populated by an ocean-going tug with three barges in tow and a becalmed
lumber schooner, a low-lying point of land (perhaps an island) thrust
out into the west. On the nearer land human life was quickening: here
and there pale streamers of smoke swung up from hidden chimneys on its
wooded rises.

Whitaker eyed them with longing. But they were distant from attainment
by at the least three miles of tideway through which strong waters
raced--as he could plainly see from his elevation, in the pale, streaked
and wrinkled surface of the channel.

He wagged a doubtful head, and scowled: no sign in any quarter of a boat
heading for the island, no telling when they'd be taken off the cursed
place!

In his mutinous irritation, the screaming of the gulls, over in the
west, seemed to add the final touch of annoyance, a superfluous addition
to the sum of his trials. Why need they have selected that island for
their insane parliament? Why must his nerves be racked forever by their
incessant bickering? He had dreamed of them all night; must he endure a
day made similarly distressing?

What _was_ the matter with the addle-pated things, anyway?

There was nothing to hinder him from investigating for himself. The girl
would probably sleep another hour or two.

He went forthwith, dulling the keen edge of his exasperation with a
rapid tramp of half a mile or so over the uneven uplands.

The screaming was well-nigh deafening by the time he stood upon the
verge of the bluff; beneath him gulls clouded the air like bees
swarming. And yet he experienced no difficulty in locating the cause of
their excitement.

Below, a slow tide crawled, slavering, up over the boulder-strewn sands.
In a wave-scooped depression between two of the larger boulders, the
receding waters had left a little, limpid pool. In the pool lay the body
of a man, face downward, limbs frightfully sprawling. Gulls fought for
place upon his back.

The discovery brought with it no shock of surprise to the man on the
bluff: horror alone. He seemed to have known all along that s