Chapter 14 - Page 2

vast as the sea, not gray now, but running away in little liquid waves of silver in the moonlight. Henry felt its majesty as he had already felt its might. He had never before appreciated so keenly the power of nature and the elements. Chance alone had put in their way this little island that had saved their lives.

He walked slowly back and resumed his place in the boat. That fine drying wind was still singing among the trees, making the leaves rustle softly together and filling Henry's mind with good thoughts. But these gave way after a while to feelings of suspicion. His was an exceedingly sensitive temperament. It often seemed to the others--and the wilderness begets such beliefs--that he received warnings through the air itself. He could not tell why his nerves were affected in this manner, but he resolved that he would not relax his vigilance a particle, and when the time came for him to awaken Tom Ross he decided to continue on guard with him.

"'Tain't wuth while, Henry," remonstrated Ross. "Nothin's goin' to happen here on an islan' that ain't got no people but ourselves on it."

"Tom," replied Henry, "I've got a feeling that I'd like to explore this island."

"Mornin' will be time enough."

"No, I think I'll do it now. I ought to go all over it in an hour. Don't take me for an Indian when I'm coming back and shoot at me."

"I'd never mistake a Roman senator in his togy for an Injun," replied Tom Ross grinning.

Henry looked at his clothes, but despite the drying wind they were still wet.

"I'll have to go as a Roman after all," he said.

He fastened the blanket tightly about his body in the Indian fashion, secured his belt with pistol, tomahawk and knife around his waist, and then, rifle in hand, he stepped from the boat into the forest.

"Watch good, Tom," he said. "I may be gone some time."

"You'll find nothin'."

"Maybe so; maybe not."

The woods through which Henry now passed were yet wet, and every time he touched a bough or a sapling showers of little drops fell upon him. The patch of forest was dense and the trees large. The trees also grew straight upward, and Henry concluded at once that he would find a little distance ahead a ridge that sheltered this portion of the island from the cruel north and northwest winds.

His belief was verified as the rise began within three hundred yards. It ascended rather abruptly, having a total height of seventy or eighty feet, and seeming to cross the island from east to west. Standing under the shadow of a great oak Henry looked down upon the northern half of the island, which was quite different in its characteristics from the southern half. A portion of it was covered with dwarfed vegetation, but the rest was bare rock and sand. There