confronted us only the belt of dark,
matted green girdling the huge bulk of Lakalatcha which soared skyward,
sinister, mysterious, eternal.

In the brief twilight the shore vanished into dim obscurity. Miss
Stanleigh, who for the last hour had been standing by the rail, silently
watching the island, at last spoke to me over her shoulder:

"Is it far inland--the place? Will it be difficult to find in the dark?"

Her question staggered me, for she was clearly bent on seeking out
Leavitt at once. A strange calmness overlay her. She paid no heed to
Lakalatcha's gigantic, smoke-belching cone, but, with fingers gripping
the rail, scanned the forbidding and inscrutable forest, behind which
lay the answer to her torturing doubt.

I acceded to her wish without protest. Leavitt's bungalow lay a quarter
of a mile distant. There would be no difficulty in following the path. I
would have a boat put over at once, I announced in a casual way which
belied my real feelings, for I was beginning to share some of her secret
tension at this night invasion of Leavitt's haunts.

This feeling deepened within me as we drew near the shore. Leavitt's
failure to appear seemed sinister and enigmatic. I began to evolve a
fantastic image of him as I recalled his queer ways and his uncanny
tricks of speech. It was as if we were seeking out the presiding deity
of the island, who had assumed the guise of a Caliban holding unearthly
sway over its unnatural processes.

With Williams, the boatswain, carrying a lantern, we pushed into the
brush, following the choked trail that led to Leavitt's abode. But the
bungalow, when we had reached the clearing and could discern the
outlines of the building against the masses of the forest, was dark and
deserted. As we mounted the veranda, the loose boards creaked hollowly
under our tread; the doorway, from which depended a tattered curtain of
coarse burlap, gaped black and empty.

The lantern, lifted high in the boatswain's hand, cleft at a stroke the
darkness within. On the writing-table, cluttered with papers and bits of
volcanic rock, stood a bottle and half-empty glass. Things lay about in
lugubrious disorder, as if the place had been hurriedly ransacked by a
thief. Some of the geological specimens had tumbled from the table to
the floor, and stray sheets of Leavitt's manuscripts lay under his
chair. Leavitt's books, ranged on shelving against the wall, alone
seemed undisturbed. Upon the top of the shelvin