He determined, as far as in him lay, to walk warily and to avoid, as far as possible, any just cause of offence on his side.
BOOK III
BONE OF CONTENTION
XXIV
They had been three months on the island, and in all that time had never sighted a living ship, though the remains of newly-dead ones were never wanting after bad weather.
It was evident that the men of the sea avoided Sable Island as if it were a pestilence, and came there only when it no longer mattered to them whether they came there or not.
Macro was, by degrees and with never-lessening enjoyment, amassing a very considerable treasure. If ever the chance of getting back to land arrived, and he could get his plunder home, he would have no need to follow the sea for the rest of his life. But, whether or not that crowning good fortune should ever be his, this gathering of spoil was a huge satisfaction to the very soul of him, and he desired no better.
The only flies in his big honey-pot were those rival depredators the birds. He had many a battle royal with them, and came home at times scratched and clawed and furiously comminative, consigning birds of all shapes and sizes to everlasting perdition. Spirits or no spirits, in the day time, and in the prosecution of his work, he would fight them valiantly or trick them cleverly.
But in the black storms that swept over them at times, when the great waves crashed like thunder on the spit, and the sandhills and hummocks melted away under Wulfrey's wondering eyes and built themselves afresh in new places, when the shrieking hosts came whirling round the ship and the sky was full of their raucous clamour, then the darkness came on Macro and he fell again to his seuns, and knew them, beyond all doubt, for things of evil.