As It Was in the Beginning

by Philip Verrill Mighels

So often, he reflected, a place was named for its appearance. This one, for instance, might aptly be called "Three Rocks," "Three Walls," or "Three Towers." He remembered, finally, the abominable sounds produced by the tides twice daily—sounds he had thought might have frightened the natives away. The cognomen, "Haunted Island," might not seem wholly inappropriate to a superstitious mind.

The more he reflected, the more certain he felt that some one of the names suggested to his mind might also have occurred to those of others. Considerably aroused in his centers of curiosity, and convinced that even by the dull cherry glow of his firebrand he might be enabled to confirm or confute his theory, he moved sufficiently to draw from his pocket the closely folded documents, and held them up to his torch.

The one with the inexplicable signs he promptly returned as of no immediate avail. At that instant his attention was arrested, by a sound below him on the earth.

Something, he thought, was lapping at the water!

He leaned far forward, tense and rigid on the limb, shielding his spark in one of his hands, while he peered about the pool.

There was nothing he could possibly discern—no form of a head projected out to obliterate his stars. Yet the sounds at the edge of the silent basin rose distinctly to his ears.

All but ready to bend to the end of his fuse, and touch his fire upon it, he paused, looked closer, saw ripples move to disturb his mirrored planets—and then beheld some form darkly limned on the waters.

For a moment he was certain his insolent tiger was there. Some huge blunt muzzle seemed inkily contrasted with the dull gray surface of the spring. Then the muzzle suddenly detached itself from the imagined form behind. The entire figure of some little beast was seen as it waded the pool.

Once more, disgustedly, Grenville reclined and relaxed the strain on his nerves. It was some time, then, before he thought to return to his quest of the cipher. He remembered, finally, he had meant to count the characters in some of the words to see if the number of signs thus used might not correspond with the number employed in "Island," "Three," "Haunted," "Wall," or "Tower."

A dull red glow, of most unsatisfactory dimensions and illuminative capacity, was the most he could procure from his brand. It barely sufficed to present the "writing" to his vision. For a moment, indeed, he despaired of discriminating clearly between the ending of one word and the beginning of the next. Fortunately, however, the writer had used large periods between his every word.