THE ISLAND OF THE DEAD 



Solitude and loneliness pervaded Alacranes. Of all 

 the places I had visited, this island was the most 

 hauntingly lonely. 



It must have struck C. the same way, and even 

 more powerfully than it had me. He was a much 

 older man, and, though so unfailingly cheerful and 

 helpful, he seemed to me to desire loneliness. He 

 did not fish or shoot. His pleasure appeared to be 

 walking the strand, around and around the Little 

 island, gathering bits of coral and shells and sea- 

 weeds and strange things cast up by the tides. For 

 hours he would sit high on the lighthouse stairway 

 and gaze out over the variegated mosaic of colored 

 reefs. My bed was a hammock in the loft of the 

 keeper's house and it hung close to an open door. 

 At night I woke often, and I would look out upon 

 the lonely beach and sea. When the light flashed 

 its long wheeling gleam out into the pale obscurity 

 of the night it always showed C.'s dark figure on the 

 lonely beach. I got into the habit of watching for 

 him, and never, at any time I happened to awake, 

 did I fail to see him out there. How strange he 

 looms to me now! But I thought it was natural 

 then. The loneliness of that coral reef haunted me. 

 The sound of the sea, eternally slow and sad and 

 moaning, haunted me like a passion. Men are the 

 better for solitude. 



Our bark, the Xpit, did not come back for us. 

 Day by day we scanned the heaving sea, far out 

 beyond the barrier reef, until I began to feel like 

 Crusoe upon his lonely isle. We had no way to 

 know then that our crew had sailed twice from 

 Progreso, getting lost the first time, and getting 



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