O'Shea made an expedition to the island of the picture rocks, and, in
rough kindliness, insisted upon taking Caius with him, not to see the
rocks--O'Shea thought little of them. They had an exciting journey,
rowing between the ice-floes in the bay, carrying their boat over one
ice fragment and then another, launching it each time into a sea of
dangers. They spent a couple of days entertained by the chief man of
this island, and came back again at the same delightful jeopardy of
their lives.
After this Mr. Pembroke took Caius home with him, driving again over the
sand-dune, upon which, now that the drifts had almost melted, a road
could be made. All winter the dunes had been absolutely deserted,
impassable by reason of the depth of snow. It would seem that even the
devil himself must have left their valleys at this time, or have
hibernated. The chief interest to Caius in this expedition was to seek
the hollow where he had seen, or thought he had seen, the band of
mysterious men to which O'Shea introduced him; but so changed was the
appearance of the sand by reason of the streams and rivulets of melting
snow, and so monotonous was the dune, that he grew confused, and could
not in the least tell where the place had been. He paid a visit to
Pembroke's house, and to the inn kept by the old maids, and then went
back to his own little wooden domicile with renewed contentment in its
quaint appointments, in its solitude, but above all in its nearness to
that other house in which the five women lived guarded by the mastiffs.
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