ISLANDS 59 



est, the moon shone with full strength, and when 

 at last we veered away from this wonder island, 

 it was so high that there was no moonpath on 

 the water, but only a living, shifting patch of 

 a million electric wires, which wrote untold 

 myriad messages in lunar script upon the little 

 waves. From one fraction of time to another, 

 the eye could detect and hold in memory in- 

 numerable strange figures, and the resemblance, 

 if it be not sacrilege to make any simile, was 

 only to script of languages long, long dead 

 the cuneiform of Babylon and the tendril spirals 

 of Pali. 



Once a faint light appeared upon the distant 

 shore. Our steamer spoke in a short, sharp 

 blast which thrilled us with its unexpectedness 

 and the signal among the palms was quenched. 

 From the great things of the cosmos, from bril- 

 liant Venus, and from the north star low in the 

 sky, from the new splendor of Formalhaut, ris- 

 ing ever higher in the south, our thoughts were 

 forced back to the littlenesses of the world war, 

 whose faint influence reached even thus far to 

 break the thread of our abstraction. 



BARBADOS, IN ECLIPSE AND IN SUN. The 

 vagaries of a naturalist are the delight of the 



