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Rh littered with broken fish-flakes, wound upward among a few unlighted, silent, and malodorous huts. In one of these, through the open door, he saw men and boys plying bloody knives by lantern light; but to his "Good-evening " the fishermen replied only with churlish stares. Plainly, it was an inhospitable shore. Even the phonograph had ceased. The place lay stifled in such a profound silence that he felt the oppression of the headlands towering in the dark. Also he felt himself an ass to have left his decent quarters aboard ship in the mainland town, for the childish whim of visiting an island that had loomed offshore so high and so romantic.

Suddenly, turning the corner of a hut, he halted in a stream of lamplight from another open door. It was very smoky lamplight, and there was a powerful smell of tobacco and stale beer. On the doorstep he nearly fell over a man who lay sprawled and speechless,—a white face with eyes staring upward, apparently in drunken communion with the stars.