hed Alacranes lighthouse; and when I
saw the flat strip of sand, without a tree or bush to lend it grace and
color, the bleak lighthouse, and the long, lonely reaches of barren
reefs from which there came incessant moaning, I did not wonder that two
former lighthouse-keepers had gone insane. The present keeper received
me with the welcome always accorded a visitor to out-of-the-world
places. He corroborated all that my Indian sailors had claimed for
the _rabihorcado_, and added the interesting information that
lighthouse-keepers desired the extinction of the birds because the
guano, deposited by them on the roofs of the keepers' houses, poisoned
the rain water--all they had to drink.

I climbed the narrow, spiral stair to the lighthouse tower, and there,
apparently lifted into the cloud-navigated sky, I awakened to the real
wonder of coral reefs. Ridges of white and brown showed their teeth
against the crawling, tireless, insatiate sea. Islets of dead coral
gleamed like bleached bone, and beds of live coral, amber as wine, lay
wreathed in restless surf. From near to far extended the rollers, the
curving channels, and the shoals, all colorful, all quivering with the
light of jewels. Golden sand sloped into the gray-green of shallow
water, and this shaded again into darker green, which in turn merged
into purple, reaching away to the far barrier reef, a white wall against
the blue, heaving ocean.

The crew had rowed us ashore with my boatmen Manuel and Augustine. And
then the red-shirted captain stated he would like to go back to Progreso
and return for us at our convenience. Hesitating over this, I finally
gave permission, on the promise that he would bring back the _Xpit_ in
one week.

So they sailed away, and left us soon to find out that we were marooned
on a desert island. When I saw how C. took it I was glad of our enforced
stay. Solitude and loneliness pervaded Alacranes. Of all the places I
had visited, this island was the most hauntingly lonely.

[Illustration: RABIHORCADO]

[Illustration: THE BOOBIES HAD NO FEAR OF MAN, BUT BOTH YOUNG AND OLD
WOULD PICK WITH THEIR SHARP BILLS]

It must have struck C. the same way, and even more powerfully than it
had me. He was a much older man, and, though so unfailingly cheerful and
helpful, he seemed to me to desire loneliness. He did not fish or shoot.
His pleasure appeared to be walking the strand, around and around the
little island, gathering bits of coral and s