"It's too splendid to be the German eagle. Praise the Lord, it's the native species; and he's taking his time because he has to take wide views. He has to soar high enough to get his bearings." Up and up, the glorious creature circled, till he dwindled in the dazzling blue to the size of a sea-gull; and still he wheeled and mounted, till he became a black dot no bigger than an English sky-lark. Then he moved, like a bullet, due east. "I almost believe in omens," said Duncan. "Ah, look out! There they come!" The masts of a large yacht, which must have emerged from the private harbor of which Captain Humphrey spoke, came slowly round the island. We had only just time to slip into the water, behind our rock, before she came into full view. She passed so near to us that the low sun cast the traveling shadows of her railing almost within reach of my hand; and the shadows of her two boats on the port side came along the clear green water between us and the island, like the gray ghosts of some old pirate's dinghies. She must have been still in sight, and we were still in our hiding-place, when it seemed as if the island tried to leap towards the sky, and we were deafened by a terrific concussion. Fragments of wood, and great pieces of stone, dropped all round us in the poppling water, and more than one deadly missile struck the rock itself. "They've blown up the whole show!" cried Duncan. "There can't be anybody left alive on the island!" We waited--ten minutes or more--to see if other explosions were to follow. Then we swam for clam-beach to investigate. It was littered with fragments of the buildings that had been destroyed. The tarred roof of a shed had been dropped there almost intact, as if from the claws of some gigantic eagle. The pine-wood looked as if it had been subjected to a barrage fire; and, in many places, the undergrowth was burning furiously. We dashed up the path, with the smoke stinging our eyes, towards the dull red glow, which was already beginning to rival the deepening crimson of the Maine sunset. The central portion of the house was still standing, though much of it had been blown bodily away, and the fire was laying fierce hands upon it from all sides. We turned to the north, where we supposed the wharf had been. The remains of half a dozen sheds were burning on one side of the cove, and it looked as if half the cliff had been tumbled into it on the other. The heat of the fire along the wharf was so fierce that we turned back to the house again. "Well," said Duncan, "there's evidence enough to give a few good headlines to the neutral press,--'_Gasoline Explosion on Maine Coast! Wealthy New Yorker Escapes Death in Fiery Furnace!_' Fortunately, there's also enough for Washington to lay up in its memory."