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At night the body of clouds advancing higher up the sky smothers the
whole quiet gulf below with an impenetrable darkness, in which the sound
of the falling showers can be heard beginning and ceasing abruptly--now
here, now there. Indeed, these cloudy nights are proverbial with the
seamen along the whole west coast of a great continent. Sky, land, and
sea disappear together out of the world when the Placido--as the saying
is--goes to sleep under its black poncho. The few stars left below the
seaward frown of the vault shine feebly as into the mouth of a black
cavern. In its vastness your ship floats unseen under your feet, her
sails flutter invisible above your head. The eye of God Himself--they
add with grim profanity--could not find out what work a man's hand is
doing in there; and you would be free to call the devil to your aid with
impunity if even his malice were not defeated by such a blind darkness.

The shores on the gulf are steep-to all round; three uninhabited islets
basking in the sunshine just outside the cloud veil, and opposite the
entrance to the harbour of Sulaco, bear the name of "The Isabels."

There is the Great Isabel; the Little Isabel, which is round; and
Hermosa, which is the smallest.

That last is no more than a foot high, and about seven paces across,
a mere flat top of a grey rock which smokes like a hot cinder after
a shower, and where no man would care to venture a naked sole before
sunset. On the Little Isabel an old ragged palm, with a thick bulging
trunk rough with spines, a very witch amongst palm trees, rustles a
dismal bunch of dead leaves above the coarse sand. The Great Isabel has
a spring of fresh water issuing from the overgrown side of a ravine.
Resembling an emerald green wedge of land a mile long, and laid flat
upon the sea, it bears two forest trees standing close together, with
a wide spread of shade at the foot of their smooth trunks. A ravine
extending the whole length of the island is full of bushes; and
presenting a deep tangled cleft on the high side spreads itself out on
the other into a shallow depression abutting on a small strip of sandy
shore.

From that low end of the Great Isabel the eye plunges through an opening
two miles away, as abrupt as if chopped with an axe out of the regular
sweep of the coast, right into the harbour of Sulaco. It is an oblong,
lake-like piece of water. On one side the short wooded spurs and valleys
of the Cordillera come down at right angles to the very strand; on
the other the open view of the great Sulaco plain passes into the opal
mystery of great distances overhung by dry haze. The town of Sulaco
itself--tops of walls, a great cupola, gleams of white miradors in a
vast grove of orange trees--lies between the mountains and the plain,
at some little distance from its harbour and out of the direct line of
sight from the sea.



CHAPTER TWO

The only sign of commercial activity within the harbour, visible from
the beach of the Great Isabel, is the square blunt end of the wooden

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