...of a secret location

Now I’m walking through the valley of Roseaux River, not knowing which way to go. From here, the valley seems wide, bordered in the distance by the black hills and the high mountains. The north wind is coming in from the mouth of the river, bearing with it rumours of the sea, giving rise to little whirlwinds of sand, like ashes, that for a moment make me think there are people arriving on horseback. But there’s a strange silence out here, due to all of this light.
On the other side of the hills of Venus Point there is the bustling life of Port Mathurin, the marketplace, the coming and going of pirogues in Lascars Bay, And here everything is silent like a desert island. What will I find here? Who is waiting for me?
I walk around haphazardly on the valley bottom until the end of the day. I want to understand where I am. I want to understand why I came all the way out here, what had spurred me, alerted me. In the dry sand of the river beach I trace a map of the valley using a twig: the entrance to the bay with large basalt boulders on the east and west. The bed of the Roseaux River leading up in almost a straight line to the south and then making a bend before entering the gorges, between the mountains. I don’t need to compare it with the Corsair’s map as it appears in my father’s documents: I’m obviously in the very spot where the treasure is.
Once again I feel light-headed, dizzy. There’s so much silence here, so much solitude! Only the wind blowing through the boulders and the underbrush, bearing along the distant rumbling of the sea on the reefs, but it’s the sound of a world without humans. Clouds scurry across the dazzling sky, puff, disappear behind the hills. I can’t keep the secret to myself any longer! I feel like screaming, as loud as I can, so that I’ll be heard out beyond the hills, even farther out than this island, out on the other side of the sea, all the way out in Forest Side, and my scream will penetrate the walls and deep into Laure’s heart.

[The Prospector, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]