first turn of the world--land that had
what might be hills when you got to 'em and that was pale gray against
the sun, with all the upper-works gilded; but it wasn't big land. You
could see the north and south limits; and the trees on the hills could
probably see the ocean to the east.

They were funny trees, those; and others just like them had come down
to the cove to meet us when we landed. They were a kind of pine and the
branches grew in layers, with long spaces between. Since then I've seen
trees just like them, but very little, in florists' windows; only the
florists' trees have broad scarlet sashes round their waists, by way of
decoration, maybe, or out of deference to Anthony Comstock.

The cove had been worked out by a brook that came loafing down a turfy
valley, with trees single and in spinneys, for all the world like an
English park; and at the upper end of the valley, cutting the island in
half lengthwise, as we learned later, the little wooded hills rolled
north and south, and low spurs ran out from them, so as to make the
valley a valley instead of a plain.

There were flocks of goats in the valley, which was what made the grass
so turfy, I suppose; and our own deer and antelopes were browsing near
them, friendly as you please. Near at hand big Bahut, who had been the
last but us to land, was quietly munching the top of a broad-leafed tree
that he'd pulled down; but the cats and riffraff had melted into the
landscape. So had the birds, except a pair of jungle-fowl, who'd found
seed near the cove and were picking it up as fast as they could and
putting it away.

"Well," says I, "it's an island, sure, Ivy. The first thing to do is to
find out who lives on it, owns it, and dispenses its hospitality, and
make up to them."

But she shook her head and said seriously:

"I've a feeling, Right," she says--"a kind of hunch--that there's nobody
on it but us."

I laughed at her then, but half a day's tramping proved that she was
right. I tell you women have ways of knowing things that we men haven't.
The fact is, civilization slides off 'em like water off a duck; and at
heart and by instinct they are people of the cave-dwelling period--on
cut-and-dried terms with ghosts and spirits, all the unseen sources of
knowledge that man has grown away from.

I had sure proofs of this in the way Ivy took to the cave we found in a
bunch of volcano rock that lifted sheer out of the cove and had bright
flowers smiling