ot deep enough to
swim in. So we had paddled around picking up "conches"--those great
ornamental shells which house with such fanciful magnificence an animal
something like our winkle, the hard white flesh of which, cut up fine,
makes an excellent salad; that is, as old Tom made it.

There is no fishing to speak of in these inclosed waters; nothing to go
after except sponges, which you see dotting the coral floor in black
patches. We gathered one or two, but the sponge in its natural state is
not an agreeable object. It is like a mass of slimy india-rubber, and
has to "die" and rot out its animal life, which it does with a
protesting perfume of great power, the sponge of our bath-tubs being the
macerated skeleton of the once living sponge.

We had hoped to reach our camp, out on the other side of the island,
that evening, but that dodging the shoals and sticking in the mud had
considerably delayed us. Besides, though Charlie and the captain both
hated to admit it, we had lost our way. We had been looking all
afternoon for Little Wood Cay, but as I said before, one cay was so much
like another--all alike flat, low-lying, desolate islands covered with a
uniform scrub and marked by no large trees--not unbeautiful if one has a
taste for melancholy levels, but unpicturesquely depressing and hopeless
for eyes craving more featured and coloured "scenery."

So night began to fall, and, as there is no sailing in such waters at
night, we once more cast anchor under a gloomy, black shape of land,
exceedingly lonesome and forgotten-looking, which we agreed to call
"Little Wood Cay"--till morning.

Soon all were asleep except Sailor and me. I lay awake for a long time
watching the square yard of stars that shone down through the hatch in
our cabin ceiling like a little window looking into eternity, while the
waters lapped and lapped outside, and the night talked strangely to
itself. It was a wonderful meeting-place of august lonely things--that
nameless, dark island, that shadowy water heaving vast and mournful,
that cry of the wind, that swaying vault of the stars, and, framed in
the cabin doorway, the great black head of the old dog, grave and
moveless and wondering.

Next morning Charlie and the captain were forced to own up that the
island, discovered to the day, was not Little Wood Cay. No humiliation
goes deeper with a sailing man than having to ask his way. Besides, who
was there to ask in that solitude? Doubtless a corm