“I doubt not we shall find them yet,” he said one evening to Vytal, “on some adjacent island.”
The soldier shook his head. “Let us go once again and inspect the site of their settlement.”
“It is a most dismal scene,” declared the governor, leading the way to a road running inward from the shore. “But my men can soon make the place habitable.”
“Habitable!” exclaimed a voice behind them; “’tis a perfect Eden,” and the speaker joined them.
“Ay, Master Marlowe,” returned the governor, glancing at the new-comer with a look of indulgent admiration. “But Eden is forsook.”
“’Tis the old story,” observed the poet, “of an enforced exodus, but wherein lay the fatal sin? Are birds evil? Nay, but their little fate in a falcon’s guise destroys them.”
The governor looked at him askance. “I have heard of your loose theology, sir, but pray you to restrain it here. We are a lonely people, and need God.”
The poet made no answer. The unquestioning faith of men like Vytal and the governor—the faith direct, plain, and utterly free from the cant he hated—caused him at times to covet their deep simplicity; again, he would rail against religion, and wander with vain eagerness through the mazes of a complex Pantheism. But at last, poetry, pure and undefiled by sophistries, would return to him with her quieting, magical touch, and restore the sunshine to his world. “Dreamed you ever of such verdure?” he said, at length. “Nature is prodigal here, a spendthrift in a far country.”
They were now on an eminence dominating the bay and sea. Vytal stood still and looked inland, then turned and faced the water. He spoke no word, but only gazed off to the distant shore. At last, catching sight of the busy group beneath him, he turned again and rejoined the others. “He knows it all,” thought Marlowe, “even better than I, yet says nothing.”
The road, overgrown with weeds and scarcely visible in places, led them at last to a number of huts in a wide clearing at the north end of the island. Here a scene of decay and desolation met their eyes. The sun, now setting, shot long, slanting rays across the oval, as though to exhibit every detail of the picture in one merciless moment and then be gone. “’Tis an impious revelation,” said Marlowe, glancing about drearily at the numerous deserted huts. “Look at that hovel; ’tis but the corpse of a house. And that! Its windows leer like the eye-holes of a skull. And this one, the least decayed. It stands to prove itself a home, with the mere memory of protection. How vacantly they stare at us, like melancholy madmen! Come, let us begone.” He would have started back, but seeing that Vytal and the governor had not yet finished their more practical investigation, followed them in silence.