ISLES OF SHOALS (continued)

DAY SEVEN

The lilies came out at last, after a week of straining to appear. They are everywhere about the house. Maryellen left the island yesterday to see a Celia Thaxter exhibit of painted flowers in Portsmouth. There's something ironic about that, but I can't imagine what. My brain has been running darn close to empty for days. I feel great -- callused and sunburned, rested and dumb.

This morning I swept the house, trimmed the lawn, washed a nasty pile of old dishes, mucked the outhouse and stowed the tools. I rowed across the harbor to Star and exchanged notes with the incoming stewards at the dock.

People tend to ask two questions when they learn that you've been marooned on an island without luxuries for a week. They ask -- Wasn't it hard? I say, no. You get used to it. Then they ask -- Didn't you hate leaving? No, I say. You get sick of it.

More than once I found myself counting down the intervals between the flashing of White Island light, or the moan of the automated fog horn. One day is much like another, except for the gulls, who seem to speak in endless ways. They can sound like crying babies and laughing children, like braying mules, clucking hens, moaning ghosts, howling cats, bleating lambs. They make sounds like dogs, owls, parrots and monkeys, like rusty door hinges and screeching brakes, like trains and cows, people praying, people singing, crowds murmuring at cocktail parties. They sound like boats arriving and boats departing, like clocks ticking, like bloody murder, like birth. Then the sun disappears, the gulls go silent and there is nothing but the island breathing.

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