Marooned 



THE island was a mere sandbank off the 

 low flat coast. Not a tree broke its 

 bleak levels, not even a shrub. But the long, 

 sparse, gritty stalks of the marsh-grass 

 clothed it everywhere above tide-mark, and 

 a tiny rivulet of sweet water, flowing from 

 a spring at its centre, drew a riband of inland 

 herbage and tenderer green across the harsh 

 and sombre yellow-grey of the grass. One 

 would not have chosen the island as an 

 alluring place to set one's habitation, yet at 

 its seaward end, where the changing tides 

 were never still, stood a spacious, one-storied, 

 wide-verandahed cottage, with a low shed 

 behind it. The one virtue that this lone 

 plot of sea-rejected sand could boast was 

 coolness. When the neighbour mainland 

 would be sweltering, day and night alike, 

 under a breathless heat, out here on the 

 island there was always a cool wind blowing. 



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