Fogo's dwelling, "is where the hermit lives, is it not? I should
like to meet this man that hates all women."
Sam essayed a gallant speech, but she paid no heed to it.
"What a charming creek that is, beyond the house! Let us row up
there and wait for the others."
The creek was wrapped in the first quiet of evening. There was still
enough tide to mirror the tall trees that bent towards it, and
reflect with a grey gleam one gable of the house behind. Two or
three boats lay quietly here by their moorings; beside them rested a
huge red buoy, and an anchor protruding one rusty tooth above the
water. Where the sad-looking shingle ended, a few long timbers
rotted in the ooze. Nothing in this haunted corner spoke of life,
unless it were the midges that danced and wheeled over the waveless
tide.
"Yonder lies the lepers' burial-ground," said Sam, and pointed.
"I have heard of them" (she shivered); "and that?"
She nodded towards the saddest ruin in this sad spot, the hull of
what was once a queenly schooner, now slowly rotting to annihilation
beside the further shore. She lay helplessly canted to starboard,
her head pointing up the creek. Her timbers had started, her sides
were coated with green weed; her rudder, wrenched from its pintle,
lay hopelessly askew.
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