Yet never, since I have trodden this
path, have I looked to right or left. I have defied both human
opinion and the obstacles which an unfriendly fate has thrown in my
way. All alone, I, a sailor hitherto of pleasure-craft among the
bays and islands of the New England coast, put forth in my little
sloop for a voyage of three hundred miles on the loneliest wastes
of the Pacific. All alone, did I say? No, there was Benjy the
faithful. His head is at my knee as I write. He knows, I think,
that his master's mood is sad to-night. Oh, Helen, if you ever see
these lines, will you realize how I have longed for you--how it
sometimes seems that my soul must tear itself loose from my body
and speed to you across half a world?
February 1. Since my last record my time has been well filled. In
the _Island Queen_ I have been surveying the coasts of my domain,
sailing as close in as I dared, and taking note of every crevice
that might be the mouth of a cave. Then, either in the rowboat or
by scrambling down the cliffs, I visit the indicated point. It is
bitterly hard labor, but it has its compensations. I am growing
hale and strong, brown and muscular. Aunt Sarah won't offer me any
more of her miserable decoctions when I go home. Heading first
toward the north, I am systematically making the rounds of the
island, for, after all, how do I know for certain that Captain
Sampson buried his treasure near the east anchorage? For greater
security he may have chosen the other side, where there is another
bay, I should judge deeper and freer of rocks than this one, though
more open to storms.
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