The shelter that Amos Swan had built stood on a small bare knoll, at an
elevation of fifty or sixty feet above the sea. Behind it and sheltering
it from easterly and southerly winds rose the island in sharp and rugged
ridges to a high hilltop perhaps a mile away. Between lay ascending
stretches of dark fir woods, rough outcroppings of stone and patches of
hardy grass and bushes. The crown of the hill was a bare granite ledge,
as round and nearly as smooth as an inverted bowl.
Jeremy, scrambling through the last bit of clinging undergrowth in the
late afternoon, came up against the steep side of this rocky summit and
paused for breath. He had left Jock with the sheep, which comfortably
chewed the cud in their pen, and, slipping a sort pistol, heavy and
brass-mounted, into his belt, had started to explore a bit.
He must have worked halfway round the granite hillock before he found a
place that offered foothold for a climb. A crevice in the side of the
rock in which small stones had become wedged gave him the chance he
wanted, and it took him only a minute to reach the rounded surface near
the top. The ledge on which he found himself was reasonably flat, nearly
circular, and perhaps twenty yards across.
[Illustration]
Its height above the sea must have been several hundred feet, for in the
clear light Jeremy could see not only the whole outline of the island
but most of the bay as well, and far to the west the blue masses of the
Camden Mountains. He was surprised at the size of the new domain spread
out at his feet. The island seemed to be about seven miles in length by
five at its widest part. Two deep bays cut into its otherwise rounded
outline. It was near the shore of the northern one that the hut and
sheep-pen were built. Southwesterly from the hill and farther away,
Jeremy could see the head of the second and larger inlet. Between the
bays the distance could hardly have been more than two miles, but a high
ridge, the backbone of the island, which ran westward from the hilltop,
divided them by its rugged barrier.
Jeremy looked away up the bay where he could still see the speck of
white sail that showed his father hurrying landward on a long tack with
the west wind abeam. The boy's loneliness was gone. He felt himself the
lord of a great maritime province, which, from his high watchtower, he
seemed to hold in undisputed sovereignty.
Beneath him and off to the southward lay a little island or two, and
then the cold blue of the Atlantic stretching away and away to the
world's rim.
Even as he glowed with this feeling of dominion, he suddenly became
aware of a gray spot to the southwest, a tiny spot that nevertheless
interrupted his musing. It was a ship, apparently of good size, bound up
the coast, and bowling smartly nearer before the breeze. The boy's dream
of empire was shattered. He was no longer alone in his universe.
The sun was setting, and he turned with a yawn to descend. Ships were
interesting, but just now he was hungry. At the edge of the crevice he
looked back once more, and was surprised to see a second sail behind the
first--a smaller vessel, it seemed, but shortening the distance between
them rapidly. He was surprised and somewhat disgusted that so much
traffic should pass the doors of this kingdom which he had thought to be
at the world's end. So he clambered down the cliff and made his way
homeward, this time following the summit of the ridge till he came
opposite the northern inlet.