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Updated: May 29, 2025
We know that the neighbourhood of the Isle of Sheppey, at the mouth of the Thames, was covered with rich tropic vegetation; with screw pines and acacias, canes and gourds, tenanted by opossums, bats, and vultures: that huge snakes twined themselves along the ground, tortoises dived in the pools, and crocodiles basked on the muds, while the neighbouring seas swarmed with sharks as huge and terrible as those of a West Indian shore.
The Indian sentinel would hear, would gaze, would be curious, would suspect, would approach; and then death to two scouts, despair for the island. Fascinated, they watched the great, yellowish blotched snake. He loitered, basked, his tongue played, his fangs showed, he came on, little by little. Oh, if he would only veer off! But he was determined. What an ugly, obstinate brute!
Out of doors the world basked in June sunshine and preened itself in blossom. The birds sang and chirped in the lichened maples that cupped the little church in, and peace was over all the Putney valley. Inside the classroom disgusted women buzzed like angry bees. "What on earth are we to do?" sighed the secretary plaintively. Mary Kilburn was always plaintive.
About mid-day we went on shore, lunched, and then basked in the sun until the afternoon, when we again got into the baidarkas and paddled further up the bay to a place where a wide meadow extends out from the base of the mountains. Here Nikolai, my head hunter, went on shore with the glasses, and raising himself cautiously above the bank, took a long look at the country beyond.
The first one that came round without a cargo turned in from some distance and took her away. The morning had none of the supernatural beauty that comes over the island so often in rainy weather, so we basked in the vague enjoyment of the sunshine, looking down at the wild luxuriance of the vegetation beneath the sea, which contrasts strangely with the nakedness above it.
Of these welcome opportunities, the building of the Carlton Hotel is the best remembered within recent times; but the erection of new houses off St. James' Street in the year 1903 brought the ladies and the gentlemen of the road again to its harborage; and they basked there for many weeks in undisputed possession. The orgies thus became a nightly feature of the vagrant's life.
Beyond the vast tract of grassland to which Grand Pré owed its name, spread the blue glistening breast of the Basin of Mines; beyond this again, the distant mountains of Cobequid basked in the summer sun; and nearer, on the left, Cape Blomedon reared its bluff head of rock and forest above the sleeping waves.
John's Wood, an elegantly appointed little place, which he rented and maintained, and where the popular personage known as Violet Vere, basked in the very lap of luxury. Meanwhile, Thelma paced up and down her own boudoir, into which she had escaped through the sliding panel which had baffled her admirer.
They grew sleek and fat and each day they basked longer in the warm sunshine. They had few rivals. The lynxes were in the heavier timber to the south. There were no wolves. Fisher-cat, marten and mink were numerous along the creek, but these were neither swift-hunting nor long-fanged. One day they came upon an old otter.
The woods of the park basked in the fresh sunshine; three hundred yards away was Falmer Station, and beyond that the line was visible for a mile as it ran up the straight valley. Indeed he need hardly move till he saw the steam of his train on the limit of the horizon. That would be ample warning that it was time to go.
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