AN ISLAND EXISTENCE 89 



them and put them in place. For days thereafter our laboratory 

 floor was littered with the bodies of tiny shrimp and copepods 

 which had found shelter in the crevices of the boards and 

 which as the wood dried crept from their hiding places to seek 

 the cool water that had so mysteriously vanished. Most amaz- 

 ing was the length of time the scent of the sea remained. At 

 night when I sat in the deck chair, which we had salvaged from 

 the ship, and closed my eyes I could transport myself a thou- 

 sand miles away by taking a deep breath of the aroma exuding 

 from these water-logged boards. It was an odor that swept me 

 back to the salt marshes and flats of the Chesapeake Bay, an 

 indefinable aura of long-dead reeds, marsh mud and decaying 

 fish. 



There is something very basic and fundamental about the 

 formation of a new home; some instinct within us that traces 

 its genesis to a long forgotten century when a brutish two- 

 legged creature crawled into a cave and barred its entrance 

 with sticks against the elements. There comes first a sense of 

 relief, an innate satisfaction in the knowledge that whatever 

 comes, weariness, wetness, the bitter pinch of cold or scorch 

 of sun, there is a haven in which to retire, in which to revive 

 the sagging spirit, to contemplate and to prepare for the new 

 day. It is in the very possession of a home— or a cave— that men 

 are differentiated from the beasts. The first fire, kindled on the 

 ledge of some Neanderthal chff still casts its heat in the hearth- 

 glow of a streamlined fireplace. The cave-dweller, tired from 

 the hunt, who threw himself exhausted on an animal's skin on 

 the floor of his troglodytic shelter is blood brother to the man 

 who goes home to a bed. The quaint modern custom of eleva- 

 tion and the lapse of a thousand centuries is the only basic 

 change. 



I think I know something of the feelings of the cave man, 

 or at least, I can claim closer kin because our house was so like 



