Every here and there, when they climbed the ridge to look over, they came on little basins like their own, comparatively green and populous with rabbits. But never a sign of human life or habitation, not a tree or a shrub, not an animal except the rabbits.
"A God-forsaken hole," was the mate's comment, as they stood, after a couple of hours' trudging, looking out over the interminable ridges in front, and the great unruffled sheet of water below, and the gray slow-heaving sea beyond on both sides, and the gray sky enclosing all.
"There's nought here and never has been. Let's go back and get to work."
"That lake, or inlet, or whatever it is, seems to narrow over there. Suppose we see where it goes to," suggested Wulfrey.
"Only back into sea, I reckon."
However, they tramped on along the beach, and next time they looked over the ridge the land below had broadened out. The water had shrunk to a mere channel which ran, they saw, not into the sea but into a still larger lake beyond, unless it in turn should prove to be a long arm of the sea running all through the middle of the island. They could follow the low sand-spit which divided it from the sea on the south side, and the long line of hummocks on the north, till they faded out of sight in the distance.
Right in front of them spread the largest valley they had yet come across, and the coast ridges ran down into the middle of it and ended in the highest hill they had seen, and between the hill and the lake lay a number of large ponds.
"We must get up there," said Wulfrey.
"No manner o' use," growled the mate, who found tramping through the sand very tiring, and was eager to get back and attack the wreckage for shelter and fire and food and rum.
"Stop you here then, Macro, and I'll go on. If there's anything to see I'll wave my arms. You might skin those rabbits too. I'm beginning to feel empty again."