“So that’s the land,” he said at length. “What do you make of it, Edward?” “I?” said Edward. “It makes me shudder somehow. It’s the end of something. Change is always horrible to me.” Cammock joined them, thumbing the leaves of a portolano. “We’re away to the east, sir,” he said to Margaret. “If you’ll stand in a bit further, sir, we shall open Golden Island clear, before dark. That’ll give me a landfall to go by.” “And when shall we make Springer’s Key, captain?” “To-morrow, some time, sir. But we’ll stand in further here, if you don’t mind. There may be some of those friends of ours in the harbour here. A nice little sandy bay in there, sir.” Soon the hills drew nearer. The line of land became jagged. What had seemed to be the main now showed as islands, a long, low island, dark with mangrove, and to the south of it a sloping peak, wooded to the top, a cone of green, with rocks about it over which the breakers toppled. Margaret could see the line of the breakers advancing towards them, blue and glassy. In the stillness, he could see the curl on the wave, the slow running curl along the line, then the intense brightness of the burst, a momentary marvel of white. He looked at Cammock, who was looking at the wooded hill, full of memories. A few of the men of war, faking a hawser in the waist, stopped their work to look with him. One or two of them, raising their caps, waved to the island. “Good old Golden Island,” they cried. “The good old Golden Island.” “Yes,” said Captain Cammock to Margaret. “That’s Golden Island. Last time I was ashore there we were three hundred strong, going across the Isthmus. We’d fires on the sands there, I and my brother Bill, roasting crabs together. I remember we chucked pebbles over that palm on the spit there. Queer the palm being there and Bill gone, sir. He could chuck good, too; further’n I could.” “You were very much attached to your brother, weren’t you?” Margaret asked him. “I didn’t set much value by him at the time, sir. It’s afterwards one feels it. There’s a little black devil of a reef beyond there, two feet under water at a low spring. You don’t see it, and yet it rips you across all right. Ready oh, Mr. Cottrill. Haul the foot of the mainsail up. Hands about ship. Ease down the hellum.”