One of our reasons for seeking Little Wood Cay, which it proved had been close by all the time, was that it is one of the few cays where one can get fresh water.  “Good water here,” says the chart.  We wanted to refill some of our jars, and so we landed there, glad to stretch our legs, while old Tom cooked our breakfast on the beach, under a sapodilla tree.  The vegetation was a little more varied and genial than we had yet seen, and some small white flowers, growing in long lines, as if they had been planted, wafted a very sweet fragrance across our breakfast table of white coral sand.  While we were eating, two or three little lizards with tails curiously twirled round and round, like a St. Catherine wheel, made themselves friendly, and ate pieces of bread from our hands without fear.

Now that we knew where we were, it was clear, but by no means careless sailing to our camp.  By noon we had made the trip through the bight and, passing out of a narrow creek known as Loggerhead Creek, were on the southwest side of the island.  A hundred and fifty miles or so of straight sailing would have brought us to Cuba, but our way lay north up the coast, as we had come down the other.  Here was the same white water as the day before, with the bluish track showing the deeper channel; the same long, monotonous coast; the same dwarf, rusty-green scrub; not a sign of life anywhere.  Nothing but the endless blue-streaked white water and the endless desert shore.  We were making for what is known as the Wide Opening, a sort of estuary into which a listless stream or two crawl through mangrove bushes from the interior swamps.

But there is one startlingly pleasant river, curiously out of place in its desolate surroundings, which, after running through several miles of marl swamps, enters upon an oasis of fresher foliage and even such stately timber as mahogany, lignum vitae, and horseflesh; and it was in this oasis, at the close of the third day out, we found ourselves.  Here, a short distance from the bank, on some slightly ascending rocky ground, under the spreading shade of something like a stretch of woodland, Charlie, several years ago, had built a rough log shanty for his camp—­one of two or three camps he had thus scattered for himself up and down the “out islands,” where nearly all the land is no man’s, and so every man’s, land.  The particular camp at which we had now arrived he had not visited for a long time.

“Last time I was here,” said Charlie, laughing, as, having dropped anchor, we rowed ashore, “I thought of what seemed to me an infallible test of the loneliness of the place.  Let’s see how it has worked.”

The log shanty stood before us, doorless, comfortably tucked in under an umbrella-headed tamarind tree.  There was no furniture in it but a rough table.  On the table was a bottle, fallen over on its side.  This Charlie snatched up, with a cry of satisfaction.

“What do you think of this?” he said.  “Not a soul has been here but the turkey-buzzards.  The beggars knocked this over, but otherwise it is just as I left it.  Do you want better proof than this?”—­and he held out the bottle for me to look at.