from the reflected foliage, ran now deep and sluggish against the huge
boulders which stand defiantly up: now over shallow places, shining
with silver sand, fretting itself into white foam and flinging up jets
of spray as if in anger. Waking from my reverie, I said:

"Jasper, that is a tranquil-looking island; to whom does it belong?"

Jasper shook his woolly head as if he were puzzled, and with the air
of a person about to impart some awful secret, replied:

"Dat don't belong to nobody; dat's haunted."

"Haunted, Jasper! that is impossible. There are no such things as
haunted places."

"Well, massa," he replied, his faith still unshaken, "dat's what I was
tole long, long years ago when I was a chile. Ye could hear noises
comin' fum da like distress, and dem sounds war jined wid de talkin'
ob men."

"Very likely, but such sounds came from persons on the island, and
they were living, just as you and I are."

"Dar war sounds," answered my boatman, "but da warn't no people on dat
island. Dem sounds warn't ob dis world."

Such an opinion could not be weakened, for my dusky companion had been
raised in this local superstition and it was as firmly rooted as was
his faith in future forgiveness, and so I merely inquired: