“Push off!  Give way!” cried the mate.  The boat gave one heavy drag and lurch, and next moment shot swiftly from the beach, turned on her heel, and sped.  The dogs ran howling along the water’s marge; now pausing to gaze at the flying boat, then motioning as if to leap in chase, but mysteriously withheld themselves; and again ran howling along the beach.  Had they been human beings, hardly would they have more vividly inspired the sense of desolation.  The oars were plied as confederate feathers of two wings.  No one spoke.  I looked back upon the beach, and then upon Hunilla, but her face was set in a stern dusky calm.  The dogs crouching in her lap vainly licked her rigid hands.  She never looked be her:  but sat motionless, till we turned a promontory of the coast and lost all sights and sounds astern.  She seemed as one who, having experienced the sharpest of mortal pangs, was henceforth content to have all lesser heartstrings riven, one by one.  To Hunilla, pain seemed so necessary, that pain in other beings, though by love and sympathy made her own, was unrepiningly to be borne.  A heart of yearning in a frame of steel.  A heart of earthly yearning, frozen by the frost which falleth from the sky.

The sequel is soon told.  After a long passage, vexed by calms and baffling winds, we made the little port of Tombez in Peru, there to recruit the ship.  Payta was not very distant.  Our captain sold the tortoise oil to a Tombez merchant; and adding to the silver a contribution from all hands, gave it to our silent passenger, who knew not what the mariners had done.

The last seen of lone Hunilla she was passing into Payta town, riding upon a small gray ass; and before her on the ass’s shoulders, she eyed the jointed workings of the beast’s armorial cross.

* * * * *

SKETCH NINTH.

HOOD’S ISLE AND THE HERMIT OBERLUS.

  “That darkesome glen they enter, where they find
  That cursed man low sitting on the ground,
  Musing full sadly in his sullein mind;
  His griesly lockes long gronen and unbound,
  Disordered hong about his shoulders round,
  And hid his face, through which his hollow eyne
  Lookt deadly dull, and stared as astound;
  His raw-bone cheekes, through penurie and pine,
  Were shronke into the jawes, as he did never dine. 
  His garments nought but many ragged clouts,
  With thornes together pind and patched reads,
  The which his naked sides he wrapt abouts.”

Southeast of Crossman’s Isle lies Hood’s Isle, or McCain’s Beclouded Isle; and upon its south side is a vitreous cove with a wide strand of dark pounded black lava, called Black Beach, or Oberlus’s Landing.  It might fitly have been styled Charon’s.

It received its name from a wild white creature who spent many years here; in the person of a European bringing into this savage region qualities more diabolical than are to be found among any of the surrounding cannibals.