They were now on an eminence dominating the bay and sea. Vytal stood still and looked inland, then turned and faced the water. He spoke no word, but only gazed off to the distant shore. At last, catching sight of the busy group beneath him, he turned again and rejoined the others. “He knows it all,” thought Marlowe, “even better than I, yet says nothing.” The road, overgrown with weeds and scarcely visible in places, led them at last to a number of huts in a wide clearing at the north end of the island. Here a scene of decay and desolation met their eyes. The sun, now setting, shot long, slanting rays across the oval, as though to exhibit every detail of the picture in one merciless moment and then be gone. “’Tis an impious revelation,” said Marlowe, glancing about drearily at the numerous deserted huts. “Look at that hovel; ’tis but the corpse of a house. And that! Its windows leer like the eye-holes of a skull. And this one, the least decayed. It stands to prove itself a home, with the mere memory of protection. How vacantly they stare at us, like melancholy madmen! Come, let us begone.” He would have started back, but seeing that Vytal and the governor had not yet finished their more practical investigation, followed them in silence. Most of the hovels had been torn down to within about eight feet of the ground. The small boards which had served to barricade their windows were scattered about like the fallen slabs of graves, while here and there a door, evidently unhinged by violence, lay flat against the earth, as though, if raised, it would reveal the entrance to a subterranean vault. The roofs, which were but the ceilings of the first stories, yawned wide to the sky, save where a few mouldering, worm-pitted rafters deepened the inner gloom. Melons grew about walls and thresholds in rotting profusion, while a hoard of parasitic weeds and wild grape-vines ran in and out between the logs. Some of the cabins, having fared yet worse, were now but black heaps of charred timber, half covered with long green tendrils, as if the fingers of Nature were striving to drag them back to life. And near the middle of the clearing a large pile of logs, rafters, bricks, and stone blocks showed that a fortress had been razed to the ground. The three men walked on with few words, until Vytal, standing at the margin of the oval, called Marlowe’s attention to a narrow pathway almost concealed by shrubs and fallen leaves. It led through the dense forest. Impulsively, Marlowe started to follow it, but the governor would have restrained him. “Have a care, Sir Poet; mayhap this is an Indian trail, and leads to danger!” “No,” called Marlowe, who, unheeding the other’s protest, had hastened along the path to a distance of several rods. “Come.”