AN ISLAND OF WATER 323 



the sound of the new station's number — Seventy- 

 four. Thus was made first contact with my island 

 of water. 



For the next ten days, from early on this Mon- 

 day of May twenty-fifth, to five in the afternoon 

 of June third, we floated, within as small an area 

 as was possible without anchoring, above the isle 

 of our own making. I will give it the dignity of a 

 definition such as used to be printed in our school 

 geographies : 



The center of the island is four and a half degrees of 

 latitude north of the equator, and eighty-seven degrees of 

 longitude west of Greenwich. Its nearest terrestrial 

 neighbor is Cocos Island, which is due north, one degree, 

 or sixty miles. To the south-west, three hundred and 

 fifteen miles away, is Tower Island, the nearest of the 

 Galapagos, and the nearest point on the American conti- 

 nent is Florena Point, Costa Rica, three hundred and five 

 miles northeast. The inhabitants of Seventy-four are 

 engaged chiefly in fishing, its exports being fish, sea- 

 cucumbers, jelly-fish and other marine products, while its 

 imports consist of entangled dredges, coal ashes and 

 fresh-water rain. For ten days it was a colonial posses- 

 sion of the United States. It has now reverted to No 

 Man's Land and the realm of memory and imagination. 



Cocos vanished from sight early in the evening 

 of that damp Sunday, yet day and night thereafter 

 we were constantly to feel her influence, even when 

 sixty miles away. The rain steadied to a down- 

 pour, and as I looked out of my cabin door, the 

 deck was a maze of starred splashes, and the edge 



