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The foreground was of sand and scrub and wreckwood; in the middle distance the many-hued and smooth expanse of a lagoon, enclosed by a wall of breakers; beyond, a blue strip of ocean. The sky was cloudless, and I could hear the surf break.
Suppose a man to dig up a galleon on the Coromandel coast, his rakish schooner keeping the while an offing under easy sail, and he, by the blaze of a great fire of wreckwood, to measure ingots by the bucketful on the uproarious beach: such an one might realise a greater material spoil; he should have no more profit of romance than Pinkerton when he cast up his weekly balance-sheet in a bald office.
Suppose a man to dig up a galleon on the Coromandel coast, his rakish schooner keeping the while an offing under easy sail, and he, by the blaze of a great fire of wreckwood, to measure ingots by the bucketful on the uproarious beach; such an one might realise a greater material spoil; he should have no more profit of romance than Pinkerton when he cast up his weekly balance-sheet in a bald office.
"Wreckwood, eh?" "A good amount of it ought to be comin' in, after the gale." "Then where's your hook?" for the wreckwood gatherers along this part of the coast carry long gaffs to hook the flotsam and drag it above reach of the waves. "Left it up the bank," said the old man shortly.
On one of the islands which he visited, he took up his abode in a neat cabin belonging to a planter, where he found welcome shelter, and a cheerful fire made from the wreckwood scattered abundantly upon the shore. There was a family of children, a merry group of boys and girls, who kept jingling in their hands some sort of playthings. "What have you got there, my boys? he asked.
The old man led the way out into the yard; and there, indeed, amid an indescribable litter of timber wreckwood in balks and boards, worthless lengths of deck-planking, knees, and transoms, stem-pieces and stern-posts, and other odds and ends of bygone craft, condemned spars, barrel-staves, packing-cases a boat reposed on the stocks; but such a boat as might make a sane man doubt his eyesight.
They sat together in a little queer, dim room, smelling of tar and fish, and bright with the flames of wreckwood.
She came obediently, and sat beside him, and he put his arm round her. The blue and ruddy flicker of the wreckwood lit up the dark day. "I've been thinking a lot about this, and I know now there is only one thing between us, and that's Ansdore." "How d'you mean? It ain't between us." "It is again and again you seem to be putting Ansdore in the place of our love.
I first saw it, or first remember seeing it, framed in the round bull's-eye of a cabin port, the sea lying smooth along its shores like the waters of a lake, the colourless, clear light of the early morning making plain its heathery and rocky hummocks. There stood upon it, in those days, a single rude house of uncemented stones, approached by a pier of wreckwood.
"No, nor never will!" retorted Mac, with a clang of despair and triumph in his tones. The truth was soon plain to all. No buoys, no beacons, no lights, no coal, no station; the castaways pulled through a lagoon and landed on an isle, where was no mark of man but wreckwood, and no sound but of the sea.
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