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"Ask me not, senor."

"You saw ships pass, far away; you waved to them; they passed on -- was
that it, Hunilla?"

"Senor, be it as you say."

Braced against her woe, Hunilla would not, durst not, trust the weakness of
her tongue. Then when our captain asked whether any whaleboats had --

But no, I will not file this thing complete for scoffing souls to quote,
and call it firm proof upon their side. The half shall here remain untold.
Those two unnamed events which befell Hunilla on this isle, let them abide
between her and her God. In nature, as in law, it may be libelous to speak
some truths.

Still, how it was that, although our vessel had lain three days anchored
nigh the isle, its one human tenant should not have discovered us till just
upon the point of sailing, never to revisit so lone and far a spot, this
needs explaining ere the sequel come.

The place where the French captain had landed the little party was on the
further and opposite end of the isle. There too it was that they had
afterwards built their hut. Nor did the widow in her solitude desert the
spot where her loved ones had dwelt with her, and where the dearest of the
twain now slept his last long sleep, and all her plaints awaked him not,
and he of husbands the most faithful during life.

Now, high broken land rises between the opposite extremities of the isle. A
ship anchored at one side is invisible from the other. Neither is the isle
so small but a considerable company might wander for days through the
wilderness of one side and never be seen, or their halloos heard, by any
stranger holding aloof on the other. Hence Hunilla, who naturally
associated the possible coming of ships with her own part of the isle,
might to the end have remained quite ignorant of the presence of our
vessel, were it not for a mysterious presentiment, borne to her, so our
mariners averred, by this isle's enchanted air. Nor did the widow's answer
undo the thought.

"How did you come to cross the isle this morning, then, Hunilla?" said our
captain.

"Senor, something came flitting by me. It touched my cheek, my heart,
senor."

"What do you say, Hunilla?"

"I have said, senor, something came through the air."

It was a narrow chance. For when in crossing the isle Hunilla gained the
high land in the center, she must then for the first have perceived our
masts, and also marked that their sails were being loosed, perhaps even
heard the echoing chorus of the windlass song. The strange ship was about
to sail, and she behind. With all haste she now descends the height on the
hither side, but soon loses sight of the ship among the sunken jungles at
the mountain's base. She struggles on through the withered branches, which
seek at every step to bar her path, till she comes to the isolated rock,
still some way from the water. This she climbs, to reassure herself. The
ship is still in plainest sight. But now, worn out with overtension,
Hunilla all but faints; she fears to step down from her giddy perch; she is
fain to pause, there where she is, and as a last resort catches the turban
from her head, unfurls and waves it over the jungles towards us.

During the telling of her story the mariners formed a voiceless circle
round Hunilla and the captain, and when at length the word was given to man
the fastest boat, and pull round to the isle's thither side, to bring away
Hunilla's chest and the tortoise oil, such alacrity of both cheery and sad
obedience seldom before was seen. Little ado was made. Already the anchor
had been recommitted to the bottom, and the ship swung calmly to it.

But Hunilla insisted upon accompanying the boat as indispensable pilot to
her hidden hut. So being refreshed with the best the steward could supply,
she started with us. Nor did ever any wife of the most famous admiral, in
her husband's barge, receive more silent reverence of respect than poor
Hunilla from this boat's crew.

Rounding many a vitreous cape and bluff, in two hours' time we shot inside
the fatal reef, wound into a secret cove, looked up along a green
many-gabled lava wall, and saw the island's solitary dwelling.

It hung upon an impending cliff, sheltered on two sides by tangled
thickets, and half-screened from view in front by juttings of the rude
stairway, which climbed the precipice from the sea. Built of canes, it was
thatched with long, mildewed grass. It seemed an abandoned hayrick, whose
haymakers were now no more. The roof inclined but one way, the eaves coming
to within two feet of the ground. And here was a simple apparatus to
collect the dews, or rather doubly-distilled and finest winnowed rains,
which, in mercy or in mockery, the night skies sometimes drop upon these
blighted Encantadas. All along beneath the eaves a spotted sheet, quite
weather-stained, was spread, pinned to short, upright stakes, set in the
shallow sand. A small clinker, thrown into the cloth, weighed its middle
down, thereby straining all moisture into a calabash placed below. This
vessel supplied each drop of water ever drunk upon the isle by the Cholos.
Hunilla told us the calabash would sometimes, but not often, be half filled
overnight. It held six quarts, perhaps. "But," said she, "we were used to
thirst. At sandy Payta, where I live, no shower from heaven ever fell; all
the water there is brought on mules from the inland vales."

Tied among the thickets were some twenty moaning tortoises, supplying
Hunilla's lonely larder, while hundreds of vast tableted black bucklers,
like displaced, shattered tombstones of dark slate, were also scattered
round. These were the skeleton backs of those great tortoises from which
Felipe and Truxill had made their precious oil. Several large calabashes
and two goodly kegs were filled with it. In a pot near by were the caked
crusts of a quantity which had been permitted to evaporate. "They meant to
have strained it off next day," said Hunilla, as she turned aside.

I forgot to mention the most singular sight of all, though the first that
greeted us after landing.

Some ten small, soft-haired, ringleted dogs, of a beautiful breed peculiar
to Peru, set up a concert of glad welcomings when we gained the beach,
which was responded to by Hunilla. Some of these dogs had, since her
widowhood, been born upon the isle, the progeny of the two brought from
Payta. Owing to the jagged steeps and pitfalls, tortuous thickets, sunken
clefts, and perilous intricacies of all sorts in the interior, Hunilla,
admonished by the loss of one favorite among them, never allowed these
delicate creatures to follow her in her occasional birds'-nests climbs and
other wanderings; so that, through long habituation, they offered not to
follow when that morning she crossed the land, and her own soul was then

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immediately set to work, catrying them to the boat down the long, sloping
stair of deeply shadowed rock. While my comrades were thus employed, I
looked and Hunilla had disappeared.

It was not curiosity alone, but, it seems to me, something different
mingled with it which prompted me to drop my tortoise and once more gaze
slowly around. I remembered the husband buried by Hunilla's hands. A narrow
pathway led into a dense part of the thickets. Following it through many
mazes, I came out upon a small, round, open space, deeply chambered there.

The mound rose in the middle; a bare heap of finest sand, like that
unverdured heap found at the bottom of an hourglass run out. At its head
stood the cross of withered sticks, the dry, peeled bark still fraying from
it, its transverse limb tied up with rope and forlornly adroop in the
silent air.

Hunilla was partly prostrate upon the grave, her dark head bowed, and lost
in her long, loosened Indian hair, her hands extended to the cross-foot
with a little brass crucifix clasped between -- a crucifix worn
featureless, like an ancient graven knocker long plied in vain. She did not
see me, and I made no noise, but slid aside and left the spot.

A few moments ere all was ready for our going, she reappeared among us. I
looked into her eyes, but saw no tear. There was something which seemed
strangely haughty in her air, and yet it was the air of woe. A Spanish and
an Indian grief, which would not visibly lament. Pride's height in vain
abased to proneness on the rack; nature's pride subduing nature's torture.

Like pages the small and silken dogs surrounded her, as she slowly
descended towards the beach. She caught the two most eager creatures in her
arms: "Mia Teeta! Mia Tomoteeta!" and, fondling them, inquired how many
could we take on board.

The mate commanded the boat's crew -- not a hard-hearted man, but his way
of life had been such that in most things, even in the smallest, simple
utility was his leading motive.

"We cannot take them all, Hunilla; our supplies are short; the winds are
unreliable; we may be a good many days going to Tombez. So take those you
have, Hunilla, but no more."

She was in the boat; the oarsmen, too, were seated; all save one, who stood
ready to push off and then spring himself. With the sagacity of their race,
the dogs now seemed aware that they were in the very instant of being
deserted upon a barren strand. The gunwales of the boat were high; its prow
-- presented inland -- was lifted; so, owing to the water, which they
seemed instinctively to shun, the dogs could not well leap into the little
craft. But their busy paws hard scraped the prow, as it had been some
farmer's door shutting them out from shelter in a winter storm. A clamorous
agony of alarm. They did not howl, or whine; they all but spoke.

"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 behind 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 earthy 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 grouen 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 lsle,
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.

About half a century ago, Oberlus deserted at the above-named island, then,
as now, a solitude. He built himself a den of lava and clinkers, about a
mile from the Landing, subsequently called after him, in a vale, or
expanded gulch, containing here and there among the rocks about two acres
of soil capable of rude cultivation, the only place on the isle not too
blasted for that purpose. Here he succeeded in raising a sort of degenerate
potatoes and pumpkins, which from time to time he exchanged with needy
whalemen passing, for spirits or dollars.

His appearance, from all accounts, was that of the victim of some malignant
sorceress; he seemed to have drunk of Circe's cup; beastlike; rags
insufficient to hide his nakedness; his befreckled skin blistered by
continual exposure to the sun; nose flat; countenance contorted, heavy,
earthy; hair and beard unshorn, profuse, and of fiery red. He struck
strangers much as if he were a volcanic creature thrown up by the same
convulsion which exploded into sight the isle. All bepatched and coiled
asleep in his lonely lava den among the mountains, he looked, they say, as