vegetable, save it be the stunted trees, which, indeed, grew in clumps
here and there over all the land, so much as I could see.

This silence, when I grew fully aware of it was the more uncanny; for my
memory told me that never before had I come upon a country which
contained so much quietness. Nothing moved across my vision--not even a
lone bird soared up against the dull sky; and, for my hearing, not so
much as the cry of a sea-bird came to me--no! nor the croak of a frog,
nor the plash of a fish. It was as though we had come upon the Country of
Silence, which some have called the Land of Lonesomeness.

Now three hours had passed whilst we ceased not to labor at the oars, and
we could no more see the sea; yet no place fit for our feet had come to
view, for everywhere the mud, grey and black, surrounded us--encompassing
us veritably by a slimy wilderness. And so we were fain to pull on, in
the hope that we might come ultimately to firm ground.

Then, a little before sundown, we halted upon our oars, and made a scant
meal from a portion of our remaining provisions; and as we ate, I could
see the sun sinking away over the wastes, and I had some slight diversion
in watching the grotesque shadows which it cast from the trees into the
water upon our larboard side; for we had come to a pause opposite a clump
of the vegetation. It was at this time, as I remember, that it was borne
in upon me afresh how very silent was the land; and that this was not due
to my imagination, I remarked that the men both in our own and in the
bo'sun's boat, seemed uneasy because of it; for none spoke save in
undertones, as though they had fear of breaking it.

And it was at this time, when I was awed by so much solitude, that there
came the first telling of life in all that wilderness. I heard it first
in the far distance, away inland--a curious, low, sobbing note it was,
and the rise and the fall of it was like to the sobbing of a lonesome
wind through a great forest. Yet was there no wind. Then, in a moment, it
had died, and the silence of the land was awesome by reason of the
contrast. And I looked about me at the men, both in the boat in which I
was and that which the bo'sun commanded; and not one was there but held
himself in a posture of listening. In this wise a minute of quietness
passed, and then one of the men gave out a laugh, born of the nervousness
which had taken him.

The bo'sun muttered to him to hush, and, in the same momen