Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/15



island was there, yet it has gone. The seas have been scoured to every point of the compass by the scientifically or morbidly curious, by those lustful of blood or gold, yet no keel has sailed between its Twin Horns under the Seven Moons since that memorable year. One would swear that the very seas which the island jeweled were uncharted. Real enough, however, they were to the voyagers in that mad venture, for, after all, there is nothing quite so astounding and bewildering, nothing so romantic or so heavily veiled in illusion, as stark, naked Truth.

Reverse your camera, Time; flash back over the years; unreel your myriad little pictures on the silver screen; turn your long finger of light upon the protagonists—no, not that crazy New York crowd—not yet—but on those simpler folk who from childhood curled their fingers in the manes of the wild seahorses, who knew what it meant to sail out into the white shroud of the sea.

They are vanishing fast, these types, like the lone horsemen from the plains of the West, but they were more than 3