Nearer hand I saw the sister islet, the wreck, the Norah Creina, and the Norah's boat already moving shoreward.

For the sun was now low, flaming on the sea's verge; and the galley chimney smoked on board the schooner.
It thus befell that though my discovery was both affecting and suggestive, I had no leisure to examine further.

What I saw was the blackened embers of fire of wreck.

By all the signs, it must have blazed to a good height and burned for days; from the scantling of a spar that lay upon the margin only half consumed, it must have been the work of more than one; and I received at once the image of a forlorn troop of castaways, houseless in that lost corner of the earth, and feeding there their fire of signal.

The next moment a hail reached me from the boat; and bursting through the bushes and the rising sea-fowl, I said farewell (I trust for ever) to that desert isle..