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London, Jack

"The Sea-Wolf"

Altogether, we'll have our hands full if we find the island uninhabited. Which we shall not, I know.'


? ? ? ? But she was right. We sailed with a beam wind along the shore, searching the coves with our glasses, and landing occasionally, without finding a sign of human life. Yet we learned that we were not the first that had landed on Endeavor Island. High up on the beach of the second cove from ours, we discovered the splintered wreck of a boat- a sealer's boat, for the rowlocks were bound in sennit, a gun-rack was on the starboard side of the bow, and in white letters was faintly visible Gazelle No. 2. The boat had lain there for a long time, for it was half filled with sand, and the splintered wood had that weather-worn appearance due to long exposure to the elements. In the stern-sheets I found a rusty ten-gauge shotgun and a sailor's sheath-knife broken short across and so rusted as to be almost unrecognizable.


? ? ? ? 'They got away,' I said cheerfully; but I felt a sinking at the heart and seemed to divine the presence of bleached bones somewhere on that beach.


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