"Is that our haven?" I asked.
"No, 'tis in no sense as secure as that which we customarily use," replied Murray, "although safe enough in storm. It is called the North Inlet. The principal harbor is known as Captain Kidd's Anchorage, and is bitten into the so'east corner of the island. We shall not open it for another two glasses."
The breeze was dwindling, which was fortunate for us as we required plenty of sea-room to weather the island; and the east coast, though flat and sandy, offered no feasible harbor or roadstead. The surf boomed up on the beaches with a steady roar which we could hear above the creaking of our vessel's cordage and the shrieking of the sea-birds whose countless flocks wheeled overhead as we approached. A half-mile astern of us the Walrus was bouncing in our wake. Seaward in every quarter the horizon-line melted into the infinite expanse of the ocean.
To me, used to the busy life of a bustling little town or the tossing treetops of the forests of the wilderness, cloaking beneath their restless boughs all manner of wild and savage life, there was something appalling in the isolation of the blotch of land ahead of us.
A continent in miniature, complete with capes, bays, inlets, rivers, mountains, woods and fields, it was yet so utterly desolate in its setting of blue-green water. Actually, I believe, 'twas as much as three leagues in length from north to south, and perhaps better than a league across at its widest. But as I stared at it from the poop of the Royal James it seemed less than the green dot of Nutting Island,[[1]] which lies in the mouth of the East River over against New York. And what scenes of heart-rending cruelty it had witnessed! What acts of ruthless perfidy!
[[1]] Governors Island.
Nearing its shores, I descried the tangled masses of trees which clothed most of its surface. A few conifers shot up to goodly stature, but the greater part of the forest growth was gnarled, wind-tortured dwarfs, misshapen abortions of trees. The whole effect of the place seen from offshore was sinister and forbidding, repulsive as the silent ferocity which emanated from the blind man Pew.
The crew of the Royal James eyed the unfolding shoreline with a slackness of interest which surprized me. Men did not talk together. There was no jesting. The bracing of the sheets and trimming of the yards brought forth no more than the customary amount of shouting and "yo-ho-hoing" without which the sailorman is powerless for good or ill.
I commented upon this; and my great-uncle, silently contemplative beside me, smiled.
"If the ensuing weeks meant leisure and carousing it might be we should be put to it to maintain our standard of discipline," he said. "But as it chances, our crew find confronting them a task of difficulty and duration, the which they know and realize. And therefore, Robert, are they silent, and not because of the spell of evil deeds which you think to decipher from our surroundings. Evil enough the island hath known, I doubt not. What place could not as much be said of? But men, and especially seamen, reck little of an evil past if land be usefully available for their needs. No, no, my boy; you shall sleep securely tonight in Captain Kidd's Anchorage, for all the ghostly memories it contains. And Peter shall eat without a qualm, for the James will lie as still as the dry land in the haven's shelter."