Wakened at length by the canting of the sloop with the fall of
the tide, he rose, rekindled his fire, cooked and ate again, smoked two
pipes, and then, idly shouldering his gun, made a long half-circuit of the
beach to south and eastward, mounted the highest dune and gazed far and
wide.
Nowhere on sand or sea under the illimitable dome was there sign of human
presence on the earth. Nor would there likely be any. Except by
misadventure no ship on any course ever showed more than a topmast above
this horizon. Of the hunters and fishermen who roamed the islands nearer
shore, with the Chandeleurs, the storm-drowned Grand Gosiers and the deep-
sea fishing grounds beyond, few knew the way hither, and fewer ever sailed
it. At the sound of his gun the birds of the beach--sea-snipe, curlew,
plover--showed the whites of their wings for an instant and fell to
feeding again. Save when the swift Wilderness--you remember the revenue
cutter?-chanced this way on her devious patrol, only the steamer of the
light-house inspection service, once a month, came up out of the southwest
through yonder channel and passed within hail on her way from the stations
of the Belize to those of Mississippi Sound; and he knew--had known before
he left the New Basin--that she had just gone by here the day before.
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