Nevertheless, he used the telescope again that day.  But there was no repetition of the incident, and he was forced to believe that he had been the victim of some extraordinary illusion.  The next morning, however, with his calmer judgment doubts began to visit him.  There was no one of whom he could make inquiries but his Indian helper, and their conversation had usually been restricted to the language of signs or the use of a few words he had picked up.  He contrived, however, to ask if there was a “waugee” (white) woman in the neighborhood.  The Indian shook his head in surprise.  There was no “waugee” nearer than the remote mountain-ridge to which he pointed.  Pomfrey was obliged to be content with this.  Even had his vocabulary been larger, he would as soon have thought of revealing the embarrassing secret of this woman, whom he believed to be of his own race, to a mere barbarian as he would of asking him to verify his own impressions by allowing him to look at her that morning.  The next day, however, something happened which forced him to resume his inquiries.  He was rowing around the curving spot when he saw a number of black objects on the northern sands moving in and out of the surf, which he presently made out as Indians.  A nearer approach satisfied him that they were wading squaws and children gathering seaweed and shells.  He would have pushed his acquaintance still nearer, but as his boat rounded the point, with one accord they all scuttled away like frightened sandpipers.  Pomfrey, on his return, asked his Indian retainer if they could swim.  “Oh, yes!” “As far as the rock?” “Yes.”  Yet Pomfrey was not satisfied.  The color of his strange apparition remained unaccounted for, and it was not that of an Indian woman.

Trifling events linger long in a monotonous existence, and it was nearly a week before Pomfrey gave up his daily telescopic inspection of the rock.  Then he fell back upon his books again, and, oddly enough, upon another volume of voyages, and so chanced upon the account of Sir Francis Drake’s occupation of the bay before him.  He had always thought it strange that the great adventurer had left no trace or sign of his sojourn there; still stranger that he should have overlooked the presence of gold, known even to the Indians themselves, and have lost a discovery far beyond his wildest dreams and a treasure to which the cargoes of those Philippine galleons he had more or less successfully intercepted were trifles.  Had the restless explorer been content to pace those dreary sands during three weeks of inactivity, with no thought of penetrating the inland forests behind the range, or of even entering the nobler bay beyond?  Or was the location of the spot a mere tradition as wild and unsupported as the “marvells” of the other volume?  Pomfrey had the skepticism of the scientific, inquiring mind.