Then he wandered up to the highest level of the rock, where there was a roof or plateau of level stone.  Half an hour afterwards, Turnbull found him clearing away the loose sand from this table-land and making it smooth and even.

“We will fight up here, Turnbull,” said MacIan, “when the time comes.  And till the time comes this place shall be sacred.”

“I thought of having lunch up here,” said Turnbull, who had a bottle of champagne in his hand.

“No, no—­not up here,” said MacIan, and came down from the height quite hastily.  Before he descended, however, he fixed the two swords upright, one at each end of the platform, as if they were human sentinels to guard it under the stars.

Then they came down and lunched plentifully in a nest of loose rocks.  In the same place that night they supped more plentifully still.  The smoke of Mr. Wilkinson’s cigars went up ceaseless and strong smelling, like a pagan sacrifice; the golden glories of Mr. Wilkinson’s champagne rose to their heads and poured out of them in fancies and philosophies.  And occasionally they would look up at the starlight and the rock and see the space guarded by the two cross-hilted swords, which looked like two black crosses at either end of a grave.

In this primitive and Homeric truce the week passed by; it consisted almost entirely of eating, drinking, smoking, talking, and occasionally singing.  They wrote their records and cast loose their bottle.  They never ascended to the ominous plateau; they had never stood there save for that single embarrassed minute when they had had no time to take stock of the seascape or the shape of the land.  They did not even explore the island; for MacIan was partly concerned in prayer and Turnbull entirely concerned with tobacco; and both these forms of inspiration can be enjoyed by the secluded and even the sedentary.  It was on a golden afternoon, the sun sinking over the sea, rayed like the very head of Apollo, when Turnbull tossed off the last half-pint from the emptied Wilkinsonian bottle, hurled the bottle into the sea with objectless energy, and went up to where his sword stood waiting for him on the hill.  MacIan was already standing heavily by his with bent head and eyes reading the ground.  He had not even troubled to throw a glance round the island or the horizon.  But Turnbull being of a more active and birdlike type of mind did throw a glance round the scene.  The consequence of which was that he nearly fell off the rock.

On three sides of this shelly and sandy islet the sea stretched blue and infinite without a speck of land or sail; the same as Turnbull had first seen it, except that the tide being out it showed a few yards more of slanting sand under the roots of the rocks.  But on the fourth side the island exhibited a more extraordinary feature.  In fact, it exhibited the extraordinary feature of not being an island at all.  A long, curving neck of sand, as smooth and wet as the neck of the sea serpent, ran out into the sea and joined their rock to a line of low, billowing, and glistening sand-hills, which the sinking sea had just bared to the sun.  Whether they were firm sand or quicksand it was difficult to guess; but there was at least no doubt that they lay on the edge of some larger land; for colourless hills appeared faintly behind them and no sea could be seen beyond.