The new spirit had driven out the old. There was no room in her
heart for fear or anxiety, and Nature had everything her own way.
The island, we found, was some three-quarters of a mile from point to
point, built in a circle, or wide horseshoe, with an opening of twenty
feet at the mouth of the lagoon. Pine-trees grew thickly all over, but
here and there were patches of silver birch, scrub oak, and
considerable colonies of wild raspberry and gooseberry bushes. The two
ends of the horseshoe formed bare slabs of smooth granite running into
the sea and forming dangerous reefs just below the surface, but the rest
of the island rose in a forty-foot ridge and sloped down steeply to the
sea on either side, being nowhere more than a hundred yards wide.
The outer shore-line was much indented with numberless coves and bays
and sandy beaches, with here and there caves and precipitous little
cliffs against which the sea broke in spray and thunder. But the inner
shore, the shore of the lagoon, was low and regular, and so well
protected by the wall of trees along the ridge that no storm could ever
send more than a passing ripple along its sandy marges.
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