"And, by Jove, when he got there, he couldn’t find it! It didn’t seem, to be in existence any longer; at least, it wasn’t to be discovered in the region where he had expected to come across it. He couldn’t remember the exact latitude and longitude, you’ll remember, although he had an approximate position which ought to have served the purpose. He cruised in the locality for over a week, backward and forward, around and around, combing every square mile of its waters; but he saw no sign of land. He had a terrible feeling that he might have passed it by night, that if the night could have been turned to day he might have caught a glimpse of it on the distant horizon. It was at night, he says, that the sense of its nearness was most acute, an ethereal presence lying all about him in the soft, impenetrable obscurity. At times he could almost smell the land. He felt that she, too, had remembered, and had remained faithful to him; that the pain and longing in her heart hung in mysterious vibrations about the island, to guide him to her if ever he came that way. But, as of old, he couldn’t tell the direction; it was always his bitter fate to lack a compass at the crises of life. He didn’t find either the island or the rock that had split the _Evening Star_; and in the end he had to go away. "He tried again, some years later, but with the same lack of success. I have an idea that his latitude and longitude were away off; yet the place where he had been picked up was exact enough. Or perhaps ... But what’s the use of speculating on a hypothesis without tangible grounds? He couldn’t find the island. _He_ is the story—as you see him over there. "By this time a hopeless melancholy had settled on him; yet he persisted in what he conceived to be the main business of life. His faith, indeed, was unquestioning; he apparently couldn’t have done otherwise, and all his days and designs arranged themselves around this central purpose as naturally as mists rise to the sun. He left the sea, and went into the pearl fishing enterprise down on the north coast of Australia. He wanted to make money—and he made it. As soon as he possessed the means, he bought a schooner, fitted her up for a year’s cruise, and disappeared over the eastern rim of the Pacific. It was well over a year, in fact, before he turned up again. "I happened to be in Singapore when he arrived from that first cruise. Going down the Jetty late one afternoon to lake my sampan, I met him wandering in the opposite direction. One look at his face told me that he’d failed again. He had come in at noon, wasn’t going anywhere, didn’t know what he wanted to do. I took him aboard with me to supper, and we had a long evening on deck under the awning. "’Devereux, has it ever occurred to you that the island may have sunk in a volcanic disturbance?’ I suggested, after he’d gone over the affair for the twentieth time.