Time passed, though it passed like a tortoise, and we came to the
Lucayas, to the outposts of the vast hunting ground of Spaniard
and pirate and buccaneer, the fringe of that zone of beauty and
villainy and fear, and sailed slowly past the islands, looking for our
prey.
The sea was blue as blue could be. Only in the morning and the
evening it glowed blood red, or spread upon its still bosom all the
gold of all the Indies, or became an endless mead of palest green
shot with amethyst. When night fell, it mirrored the stars, great
and small, or was caught in a net of gold flung across it from
horizon to horizon. The ship rent the net with a wake of white fire.
The air was balm; the islands were enchanted places, abandoned
by Spaniard and Indian, overgrown, serpent-haunted. The reef, the
still water, pink or gold, the gleaming beach, the green plume of
the palm, the scarlet birds, the cataracts of bloom, - the senses
swooned with the color, the steaming incense, the warmth, the
wonder of that fantastic world. Sometimes, in the crystal waters
near the land, we sailed over the gardens of the sea gods, and,
looking down, saw red and purple blooms and shadowy waving
forests, with rainbow fish for humming birds. Once we saw below
us a sunken ship. With how much gold she had endowed the
wealthy sea, how many long drowned would rise from her rotted
decks when the waves gave up their dead, no man could tell.
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