“No, sir,” said Cammock. “He’s pleased with the notion. He’s a trader. He wants to cut logwood without any fear of guarda-costas. He’ll take all the defence you care to give; but he won’t come cruising with you till he’s got enough friends to stop you taking the lion’s share. He’ll be back to-morrow with some friends.” Margaret went ashore, after this, to view the key. It was one of the larger keys of the archipelago. It was about a mile long, running east and west, and about a quarter of a mile across at its broadest part. In its highest part it was not more than sixty feet above the water; but the trees rising up above it to great height made it seem hilly. A sandy beach shelved down into the water on the side facing the Isthmus. On the north side the shore was rocky and steep-to, and hemmed about, by a five-mile sweep of reef, in a ring of breakers. Indeed, the reef ringed the key round; but the rocks about the beach did not break the seas. The island could only be approached from the south and east. On the other side neither ship nor boat could come within great-gun-shot. To the east, for a dozen miles or more, an array of palm keys stretched, with reefs in tumult round them. To approach the key from the east one had to sail within these keys, in a channel or fairway known as Springer’s Drive. This channel was bordered to the south by the keys fringing the Isthmus. The double line of keys, separated by three miles of sea, made a sort of palm hedge, or avenue, up to the anchorage. There was good holding-ground and riding in every part of the Drive; but ships usually rode near Springer’s Key, for they could get water there. Unlike most of the keys, it had a spring, which bubbled up strongly on the beach, through an old sunk tar-barrel, some yards beyond the tide-marks. The water was cold and clear, gushing up with a gurgle, making the sand grains dance. The bottom of the cask was covered with rusty iron, old nails, old blades of knives, old round-shot, laid there by sailors, long ago, in the belief that they would make the water medicinal. Some one had dammed up a pool below the cask, for the easier filling of the water-breakers. The water gurgled away, over the lip of the pool, amid a tangle of water plants that bore a profuse sweet blossom, like a daisy. Margaret had never seen a lovelier place. The brightness of the sun on the sea, the green of the trees towering up beyond him, the macaws of all colours, making their mockeries in sweet notes, were beautiful exceedingly. It was all new and strange to him. He half wished that he might be left alone there. He had no longer any wish to succeed. Had Olivia been on the other side of the world, his strength would have gone to make this spot a home for half the ships in the world. They would have lain there, with their sails as awnings, at anchor off the city he had builded. His citizens would have made those islands another Venice, another Athens, a glorious city, a city of noble life and law.