It was the world before the machine, almost before man, and what small events happened – the passage of a shrike, the discovery of a new path, a glimpse of a distant caïque far below – took on an unaccountable significance, as if they were isolated, framed, magnified by solitude. It was the least eerie, the most un-Nordic solitude in the world. Fear had never touched the island. If it was haunted, it was by nymphs, not monsters.
