A certain drawback to boating in our island waters was the presence of hungry hordes of sharks. You might forget them for a moment and sit happily trailing your fingers overboard, and then a huge moving shadow would darken the water, and you saw the ripple cut by a darting fin and the flash of a livid belly as the monster rolled over, ready for his mouthful. I could not but admire the thoughtfulness of Mr. Tubbs, who since his submergence on the occasion of arriving had been as delicate about water as a cat, in committing himself to strictly land operations in the search for Bill Halliwell's tombstone.

Owing, I suppose, to the stoniness of the soil, the woods upon the point were less dense than elsewhere, and made an agreeable parade ground for Mr. Tubbs and his two companions—for he was accompanied in these daring explorations with unswerving fidelity by Aunt Jane and Miss Higglesby-Browne. Each of the three carried an umbrella, and they went solemnly in single file, Mr. Tubbs in the lead to ward off peril in the shape of snakes or jungle beasts.

"To think of what that man exposes himself to for our sakes!" Aunt Jane said to me with emotion. "With no protection but his own bravery in case anything were to spring out!"

But nothing ever did spring out but an angry old sow with a litter of piglets, before which the three umbrellas beat a rapid retreat.

The routine of life on the island was now established for every one but me, who belonged neither to the land nor sea divisions, but dangled forlornly between them like Mahomet's coffin. Aunt Jane had made a magnanimous effort to attach me to the umbrella contingent, and I had felt almost disposed to accept, in order to witness the resultant delight of Miss Higglesby-Browne. But on second thoughts I declined, even though Aunt Jane was thus left unguarded to the blandishments of Mr. Tubbs, preferring, like the little bird in the play, to flock all alone, except when the Honorable Cuthbert could escape from his toil in the cave.

What with the genius of Cookie and the fruitfulness of our island, not to speak of supplies from the Army and Navy Stores, we lived like sybarites, There were fish from stream and sea, cocoanuts and bananas and oranges from the trees in the clearing. I had hopes of yams and breadfruit also, but if they grew on Leeward none of us had a speaking acquaintance with them. Cookie did wonders with the pigs that were shot and brought in to him, though I never could sit down with appetite to a massacred infant served up on a platter, which is just what little pigs look like,

"Jes' yo' cas' yo' eye on dis yere innahcent," Cookie would request, as he placed the suckling before Mr. Tubbs. "Tendah as a new-bo'n babe, he am. Jes' lak he been tucked up to sleep by his mammy. Sho' now, how yo' got de heart to stick de knife in him, Mistah Tubbs?"

It was significant that Mr. Tubbs, after occupying for a day or two an undistinguished middle place at the board, had somehow slid into the carver's post at the head of the table. Flanking him were the two ladies, so that the Land Forces formed a solid and imposing phalanx. Everybody else had a sense of sitting in outer darkness, particularly I, whom fate had placed opposite Captain Magnus. Since landing on the island, Captain Magnus had forsworn the effeminacy of forks. Loaded to the hilt, his knife would approach his cavernous mouth and disappear in it. Yet when it emerged Captain Magnus was alive. Where did it go? This was a question that agitated me daily.

The history of Captain Magnus was obscure. It was certain that he had his captain's papers, though how he had mastered the science of navigation sufficiently to obtain them was a problem. Though he held a British navigator's license, he did not appear to be an Englishman. None of us ever knew, I think, from what country he originally came. His rough, mumbling, unready speech might have been picked up in any of the seaports of the English-speaking world. His manners smacked of the forecastle, and he was altogether so difficult to classify that I used to toy with the theory that he had murdered the real Captain Magnus for his papers and was masquerading in his character.

The captain, as Mr. Vane had remarked, was Miss Browne's own find. Before the objections of Mr. Shaw—evidently a Negative Influence from the beginning—had caused her to abandon the scheme. Miss Browne had planned to charter a vessel in New York and sail around the Horn to the island. While nursing this project she had formed an extensive acquaintance with persons frequenting the New York water-front, among whom was Captain Magnus. As I heard her remark, he was the one nautical character whom she found sympathetic, by which I judge that the others were skeptical and rude. Being sympathetic, Captain Magnus found it an easy matter to attach himself to the expedition—or perhaps it was Violet who annexed him. I don't know which.

Mr. Vane used to view the remarkable gastronomic feats of Captain Magnus with the innocent and quite unscornful curiosity of a little boy watching the bears in the zoo. Evidently he felt that a horizon hitherto bounded mainly by High Staunton Manor was being greatly enlarged. I knew now that the Honorable Cuthbert's father was a baron, and that he was the younger of two sons, and that the elder was an invalid, so that the beautiful youth was quite certain in the long run to be Lord Grasmere. I had remained stolid under this information, feelingly imparted by Aunt Jane. I had refused to ask questions about High Staunton Manor. For already there was a vast amount of superfluous chaperoning being done. I couldn't speak to the b. y.—which is short for beautiful youth—without Violet's cold gray eye being trained upon us. And Aunt Jane grew flustered directly, and I could see her planning an embroidery design of coronets, or whatever is the proper headgear of barons, for my trousseau. Mr. Tubbs had essayed to be facetious on the matter, but I had coldly quenched him.

But Mr. Shaw was much the worst. My most innocent remark to the beautiful youth appeared to rouse suspicion in his self-constituted guardian. If he did not say in so many words, Beware, dear lad, she's stringing you! or whatever the English of that is, it was because nobody could so wound the faith in the b. y.'s candid eyes. But to see the fluttering, anxious wing the Scotchman tried to spread over that babe of six-feet-two you would have thought me a man-eating tigress. And I laughed, and flaunted my indifference in his sober face, and went away with bitten lips to the hammock they had swung for me among the palms—

The Honorable Cuthbert had a voice, a big, rich, ringing baritone like floods of golden honey. He had also a ridiculous little ukulele, on which he accompanied himself with a rhythmic strumming. When, like the sudden falling of a curtain, dusky, velvet, star-spangled, the wonderful tropic night came down, we used to build a little fire upon the beach and sit around it. Then Cuthbert Vane would sing. Of all his repertory, made up of music-hall ditties, American ragtime, and sweet old half-forgotten ballads, we liked best a certain wild rollicking song, picked up I don't know where, but wonderfully effective on that island where Davis, and Benito Bonito, and many another of the roving gentry—not to mention that less picturesque villain, Captain Sampson of the Bonny Lass—had resorted between their flings with fortune.

Oh, who's, who's with me for the free life of a rover? Oh, who's, who's with me for to sail the broad seas over? In every port we have gold to fling, And what care we though the end is to swing? Sing ho, sing hey, this life's but a day, So live it free as a rover may.

Oh, who's, who's with me at Fortune's call to wander? Then, lads, to sea—and ashore with gold to squander! We'll set our course for the Spanish Main Where the great plate-galleons steer for Spain. Sing ho, sing hey, this life's but a day, Then live it free as a rover may.

Then leave toil and cold to the lubbers that will bear it. The world's fat with gold, and we're the lads to share it. What though swift death is the rover's lot? We've played the game and we'll pay the shot. Sing ho, sing hey, this life's but a day, Then live it free as a rover may.

"Sing ho, sing hey!" echoed the audience in a loud discordant roar. Cookie over his dishpan flinging it back in a tremendous basso. Cookie was the noble youth's only musical rival, and when he had finished his work we would invite him to join us at the fire and regale us with plantation melodies and camp-meeting hymns. The negro's melodious thunder mingled with the murmur of wind and wave like a kindred note, and the strange plaintive rhythm of his artless songs took one back and back, far up the stream of life, until a fire upon a beach seemed one's ancestral hearth and home.

I realized that life on Leeward Island might rapidly become a process of reversion.



VII

A BABBIT'S FOOT

It was fortunate that Cookie knew nothing of the solitary grave somewhere on the island, with its stone marked with B. H. and a cross-bones, nor that the inhabitant thereof was supposed to walk. If he had, I think the strange spectacle of a lone negro in a small boat rowing lustily for the American continent might soon have been witnessed on the Pacific by any eyes that were there to see. And we could ill have spared either boat or cook.

Yet even though unvexed by this gruesome knowledge, after two or three days I noticed that Cookie was ill at ease. As the leisure member of the party, I enjoyed more of Cookie's society than the rest. On this occasion while the morning was still in its early freshness he was permitting me to make fudge. But his usual joviality was gone. I saw that he glanced over his shoulder at intervals, muttering darkly to himself. Also that a rabbit's foot was slung conspicuously about his neck.

Having made my fudge and set the pan on a stone in the stream to cool, I was about to retire with a view to conducting a limited exploring expedition of my own. The immunity of the umbrellas and the assurances of Mr. Shaw—not personally directed to me, of course; the armed truce under which we lived did not permit of that—had convinced me that I had not to dread anything more ferocious than the pigs, and the wildest of them would retire before a stick or stone. Besides, I boasted a little automatic, which I carried strapped about my waist in a businesslike manner. Mr. Vane had almost got me to the point where I could shoot it off without shutting my eyes.

Thus equipped, I was about to set off into the woods. Secretly I had been rehearsing a dramatic scene, with myself in the leading role:

Treasure-seekers assembled, including a cold and cynical Scot. Enter Virginia Harding. She wears an expression elaborately casual, but there is a light of concealed triumph in her eye.

Aunt Jane: You thoughtless child, where have you been? Really, my state of mind about you—etc., etc.

V. H.: Only for a stroll, dear aunt. And by the way, in case it's of interest to any one, I might mention that during my walk I fell over a boulder which happened to be marked with the letters B. H. and a cross-bones.

Immense commotion and excitement. Every gaze turned to V. H. (including that of cynical Scot) while on every cheek is the blush of shame at remembering that this is the same Young Person whom Miss Higglesby-Browne was permitted to cut off by treaty from the ranks of the authorised treasure-seekers.

Lured by this pleasing vision I had turned my back on Cookie and the camp, when I was arrested by an exclamation:

"Miss Jinny!"

I turned to, find Cookie gazing after me with an expression which, in the familiar phrase of fiction, I could not interpret, though among its ingredients were doubt and anguish. Cookie, too, looked pale. I don't in the least know how he managed it, but that was the impression he conveyed, dusky as he was.

"Miss Jinny, it mos' look lak yo' 'bout to go perambulatin' in dese yere woods?"

"I am, Cookie," I admitted.

The whites of Cookie's eyes became alarmingly conspicuous. Drawing near in a stealthy manner he whispered:

"Yo' bettah not, Miss Jinny!"

"Better not?" I repeated, staring.

He answered with a portentous head-shake.

"Oh, nonsense, Cookie!" I said impatiently, "There's not a thing on the island but the pigs!"

"Miss Jinny," he solemnly replied, "dey's pigs and pigs."

"Yes, but pigs is pigs, you know," I answered, laughing. I was about to walk on, but once more Cookie intervened.

"Dey's pigs and pigs, chile—live ones and—dead ones.

"Dead ones? Of course—haven't we been eating them?"

"Yo' won't neveh eat dis yere kind o' dead pig, Miss Jinny. It's—it's a ha'nt!"

The murder was out. Cookie leaned against a cocoa-palm and wiped his ebon brow.

Persistently questioned, he told at last how, today and yesterday, arising in the dim dawn to build his fire before the camp was stirring, he had seen lurking at the edge of the clearing a white four-footed shape. It was a pig, yet not a pig; its ghostly hue, its noiseless movements, divided it from all proper mundane porkers by the dreadful gulf which divides the living from the dead. The first morning Cookie, doubtful of his senses, had flung a stone and the spectral Thing had vanished like a shadow. On its second appearance, having had a day and a night for meditation, he had known better than to commit such an outrage upon the possessor of ghostly powers, and had resorted to prayer instead. This had answered quite as well, for the phantom pig had dissolved like the morning mists. While the sun blazed, what with his devotions and his rabbit's foot and a cross of twigs nailed to a tree. Cookie felt a fair degree of security. But his teeth chattered in his head at the thought of approaching night. Meanwhile he could not in conscience permit me to venture forth into the path of this horror, which might, for all we knew, be lurking in the jungle shadows even through the daylight hours. Also, though he did not avow this motive, I believe he found my company very reassuring. It is immensely easier to face a ghost in the sustaining presence of other flesh and blood.

"Cookie," said I sternly, "you've been drinking too much cocoanut-milk and it has gone to your head. What you saw was just a plain ordinary pig."

Cookie disputed this, citing the pale hue of the apparition as against the fact that all our island pigs were black.

"Then there happens to be a blond pig among them that we haven't seen," I assured him.

But the pig of flesh, Cookie reminded me, was a heavy lumbering creature. This Shape was silent as a moonbeam. There was also about it a dreadful appearance of stealth and secrecy—Cookie's eyes bulged at the recollection. Nothing living but a witch's cat could have disappeared from Cookie's vision as did the ghostly pig.

For a moment I wavered in my determination. What if the island had its wild creatures after all? But neither lynx nor panther nor any other beast of prey is white, except a polar bear, and it would be unusual to meet one on a tropical island.

I decided that Cookie's pig was after all a pig, though still in the flesh. I thought I remembered having seen quite fair pigs, which would pass for white with a frightened negro in the dim light of dawn. So far only black pigs had been visible, but perhaps the light ones were shyer and kept to the remote parts of the island. I consoled Cookie as best I could by promising to cross my fingers if I heard or saw anything suspicious, and struck out into the woods,

For all my brave words to Cookie, I had no intention of going very far afield. From the shore of the cove I had observed that the ground behind the clearing rose to the summit of a low ridge, perhaps four hundred feet in height, which jutted from the base of the peak. From this ridge I thought I might see something more of the island than the limited environment of Lantern Bay.

As the woods shut out the last glimpse of the white tents in the clearing, as even the familiar sound of the surf died down to a faint, half-imagined whisper mingling with the rustling of the palms overhead, I experienced a certain discomfort, which persons given to harsh and unqualified terms might have called fear. It seemed to me as if a very strong cord at the rear of my belt were jerking me back toward the inglorious safety of camp. Fortunately there came to me a vision of the three umbrellas and of Mr. Tubbs heroically exposing his devoted bosom to non-existent perils, and I resolved that the superior smiles with which I had greeted Aunt Jane's recital should not rise up to shame me now. I fingered my automatic and marched on up the hill, trying not to gasp when a leaf rustled or a cocoanut dropped in the woods.

There was little undergrowth between the crowding trunks of the cocoa-palms. Far overhead their fronds mingled in a green thatch, through which a soft light filtered down. Here and there the close ranks of the palms were broken by an outcropping of rock, glaring up hot and sunbeaten at a distant patch of the sky. The air of the forest was still and languid, its heat tempered like that of a room with drawn blinds.

I gained the summit of the ridge, and stood upon a bare rock platform, scantily sheltered by a few trees, large shrubs rather, with a smooth waxy leaf of vivid green. On the left rose the great mass of the peak. From far above among its crags a beautiful foamy waterfall came hurtling down. Before me the ground fell away to the level of the low plateau, or mesa, as we say in California, which made up the greater part of the island. Cutting into the green of this was the gleaming curve of a little bay, which in Mr. Shaw's chart of the island showed slightly larger than our cove. Part of it was hidden by the shoulder of the peak, but enough was visible to give a beautiful variety to the picture, which was set in a silver frame of sea.

I had not dreamed of getting a view so glorious from the little eminence of the ridge. Here was an item of news to take back to camp. Having with great originality christened the place Lookout, I turned to go. And as I turned I saw a shape vanish into the woods.

It was an animal, not a human shape. And it was light-footed and swift and noiseless—and it was white. It had, indeed, every distinguishing trait of Cookie's phantom pig. Only it was not a pig. My brief shadowy glimpse of it had told me that. I knew what it was not, but what it was I could not, as I stood there rooted, even guess,

Would it attack me, or should I only die of fright? I wondered if my heart were weak, and hoped it was, so that I should not live to feel the teeth of the unknown Thing sink in my flesh. I thought of my revolver and after an infinity of time managed to draw it from the case. My fingers seemed at once nervelessly limp and woodenly rigid. This was not at all the dauntless front with which I had dreamed of meeting danger. I had fancied myself with my automatic making a rather pretty picture as a young Amazon—but I had now a dreadful fear that my revolver might spasmodically go off and wound the Thing, and then even if it had meditated letting me go it would certainly attack me. Nevertheless I clung to my revolver as to my last hope.

I began to edge away crab-wise into the wood. Like a metronome I said to myself over and over monotonously, don't run, don't run! Dim legends about the power of the human eye floated through my brain. But how quell the creature with my eye when I could not see it? As for the hopeless expedient of screaming, I hadn't courage for it. I was silent, as I would fain have been invisible. Only my dry lips kept muttering soundlessly, don't run, don't run!

I did not run. Instead, I stepped on a smooth surface of rock and slid downhill like a human toboggan until I fetched up against a dead log. I discovered it to be a dead log after a confused interval during which I vaguely believed myself to have been swallowed by an alligator. While the alligator illusion endured I must have lain comatose and immovable. Indeed, when my senses began to come back I was still quite inert. I experienced that curious tranquillity which is said to visit those who are actually within the jaws of death. There I lay prone, absolutely at the mercy of the mysterious white prowler of the forest—and I did not care. The whole petty business of living seemed a long way behind me now.

Languidly at last I opened my eyes. Within three yards of me, in the open rock-paved glade where I had fallen, stood the Thing.

As softly as I had opened my eyes I shut them. I had an annoyed conviction that they were deceiving me—a very unworthy thing for eyes to do that were soon to be closed in death. Again I lifted my lids. Yes, there it was—only now it had put an ear back and was sniffing at me with a mingling of interest and apprehension..

The strange beast of the jungle was a white bull-terrier.

Abruptly I sat up. The terrier gave a startled sidewise bound, but paused again and stood regarding me.

"Here, pup! Here, pup! Nice, nice doggums!" I said in soothing accents.

The dog gave a low whine and stood shivering, eager but afraid. I continued my blandishments. Little by little the forlorn creature drew nearer, until I put out a cautious hand and stroked his ears. He dodged affrightedly, but presently crept back again. Soon his head was against my knee, and he was devouring my hand with avid caresses. Some time, before his abandonment on the island, he had been a well-brought-up and petted animal. Months or years of wild life had estranged him from humanity, yet at the human touch the old devotion woke again.

The thing now was to lure him back to camp and restore him to the happy service of his gods. I rose and picked up my pistol, which had regained my confidence by not going off when I dropped it. With another alluring, "Here, doggums!" I started on my way. He shrank, trembled, hesitated, then was after me with a bound. So we went on through the forest. As we neared the camp the four-footed castaway's diffidence increased. I had to pet and coax. But at last I brought him triumphantly across the Rubicon of the little stream, and marched him into camp under the astounded eyes of Cookie.

At sight of the negro the dog growled softly and crouched against my skirt. Cookie stood like an effigy of amazement done in black and white.

"Fo' de Lawd's sake, Miss Jinny," he burst out at last, "am dat de ghos'-pig?"

"It was, Cookie, but I changed him into a live dog by crossing my fingers. Mind your rabbit's foot. He might eat it, and then very likely we'd have a ghost on our hands again. But I think he'll stay a dog for the present."

"Yo' go 'long, Miss Jinny," said Cookie valiantly. "Yo' think I scared of any ghos' what lower hissel to be a live white mong'ol dog? Yere, yo' ki-yi, yo' bettah mek friends with ol' Cookie, 'cause he got charge o' de grub. Yere's a li'le fat ma'ow bone what mebbe come off'n yo' own grandchile, but yo' ain' goin' to mind dat now yo' is trans formulated dis yere way." And evidently the reincarnated ghost-pig did not.

With the midday reunion my hour of distinction arrived. The tale of the ghost-pig was told from the beginning by Cookie, with high tributes to my courage in sallying forth in pursuit of the phantom. Even those holding other views of the genesis of the white dog were amazed at his presence on the island. In spite of Cookie's aspersions, the creature was no mongrel, but a thoroughbred of points. Not by any means a dog which some little South American coaster might have abandoned here when it put in for water. The most reasonable hypothesis seemed to be that he had belonged to the copra gatherer, and was for some reason left behind on his master's departure. But who that had loved a dog enough to make it the companion of his solitude would go away and leave it? The thing seemed to me incredible. Yet here, otherwise unaccounted for, was the corporeal presence of the dog.

I had named the terrier in the first ten minutes of our acquaintance. Crusoe was the designation by which he was presented to his new associates. It was good to see how swiftly the habits of civilization returned to him. Soon he was getting under foot and courting caresses as eagerly as though all his life he had lived on human bounty, instead of bringing down his own game in royal freedom. Yet with all his well-bred geniality there was no wandering of his allegiance. I was his undisputed queen and lady paramount.

Crusoe, then, became a member of the party in good and regular standing—much more so than his mistress. Mr. Tubbs compared him not unfavorably with a remarkable animal of his own, for which the New York Kennel Club had bidden him name his own price, only to be refused with scorn. Violet tolerated him. Aunt Jane called him a dear weenty pettums love. Captain Magnus kicked him when he thought I was not looking, Cuthbert Vane chummed with him in frankest comradeship, and Mr. Shaw softened toward him to an extent which made me mainly murmur Love me, love my dog—only reversed. Not that I in the least wanted to be loved, only you feel it an impertinence in a person who so palpably does not love you to endeavor to engage the affections of your bull-terrier.

As to Cookie, he magnanimously consented to overlook Crusoe's dubious past as a ghost-pig, and fed him so liberally that the terrier's lean and graceful form threatened to assume the contours of a beer-keg.



VIII

AN EXCURSION AND AN ALARM

As the only person who had yet discovered anything on the island, I was now invested with a certain importance. Also, I had a playfellow and companion for future walks, in lieu of Cuthbert Vane, held down tight to the thankless toil of treasure-hunting by his stem taskmaster. But at the same time I was provided with an annoying, because unanswerable, question which had lodged at the back of my mind like a crumb in the throat:

By what strange chance had the copra gatherer gone away and left Crusoe on the island?

Since the discovery of Crusoe the former inhabitant of the cabin in the clearing had been much in my thoughts. I had been dissatisfied with him from the beginning, first, because he was not a pirate, and also because he had left behind no relic more fitting than a washtub. Not a locket, not a journal, not his own wasted form stretched upon a pallet—

I had expressed these sentiments to Cuthbert Vane, who replied that in view of the washtub it was certain that the hermit of the island had not been a pirate, as he understood they never washed. I said neither did any orthodox hermit, to which Mr. Vane rejoined that he probably was not orthodox but a Dissenter. He said Dissenters were so apt to be peculiar, don't you know?

One morning, instead of starting directly after breakfast for the cave, Mr. Shaw busied himself in front of the supply tent with certain explosives which were to be used in the digging operations later. The neighborhood of these explosives was a great trial to Aunt Jane, who was constantly expecting them to go off. I rather expected it too, and used to shudder at the thought that if we all went soaring heavenward together we might come down inextricably mixed. Then when the Rufus Smith returned and they tried to sort us out before interment, I might have portions of Violet, for instance, attributed to me. In that case I felt that, like Bill Halliwell, I should walk.

Having inquired of the Honorable Cuthbert and found that for an hour or two the boat would not be in requisition, I permitted the beautiful youth to understand that I would not decline an invitation to be rowed about the cove. Mr. Shaw had left his marine glasses lying about, and I had been doing some exploring with them. Under the great cliffs on the north shore of the bay I had seen an object that excited my curiosity. It seemed to be the hull of a small vessel, lying on the narrow strip of rocks and sand under the cliff. Now wreckage anywhere fills me with sad and romantic thoughts, but on the shore of a desolate island even a barrel-hoop seems to suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange. I therefore commanded the b. y. to row me over to the spot where the derelict lay.

I lay back idly in the stern as the boat skimmed over the smooth water beneath the strokes of my splendid oarsman. More than ever he looked like the island god. Every day he grew more brown and brawny, more superb in his physical vigor. But his hands, once so beautiful, were getting rough and hard with toil. There was a great raw bruise on his arm. I exclaimed pityingly.

"Oh, it's nothing. We get knocked about a bit by the sea in the cave now and then."

"You mean you are risking your lives every day for the sake of this legendary treasure that you have no reasonable reason to suppose is there."

"Perhaps not," he admitted, "but then it's such good fun looking, you know."

"That's according to one's idea of fun," I said ironically.

"Oh, well, a chap can't spend his days on flowery beds of ease, of course. Really, I find this story-book kind of thing we're doing is warm stuff, as you Americans say. And then there's Shaw—think of the difference it will make to the dear old chap if we find the gold—buy a ship of his own and snap his fingers at the P. & O."

"And you'll go along as cabin-boy or something?" "'Fraid not," he said quite simply. "A chap has his bit to do at home, you know."

The cliffs on the north shore of the cove were considerably higher than on the other side. The wreck lay close in, driven high upon the narrow shelf of rocks and sand at the base of the sheer ascent. Sand had heaped up around her hull and flung itself across her deck like a white winding-sheet. Surprisingly, the vessel was a very small one, a little sloop, indeed, much like the fragile pleasure-boats that cluster under the Sausalito shore at home. The single mast had been broken off short, and the stump of the bowsprit was visible, like a finger beckoning for rescue from the crawling sand. She was embedded most deeply at the stem, and forward of the sand-heaped cockpit the roof of the small cabin was still clear.

"Poor forlorn little boat!" I said. "What in the world do you suppose brought such a mite of a thing to this unheard-of spot?"

"Perhaps she belonged to the copra chap. One man could handle her."

"What would he want with her? A small boat like this is better for fishing and rowing about the cove."

"Perhaps she brought him here from Panama, though he couldn't have counted on taking back a very bulky cargo."

"Then why leave her strewn about on the rocks? And besides"—here the puzzle of Crusoe recurred to me and seemed to link itself with this—"then how did he get away himself?"

But my oarsman was much more at home on the solid ground of fact than on the uncharted waters of the hypothetical.

"Don't know, I'm sure," he returned uninterestedly. Evidently the hermit had got away, so why concern one's self about the method? I am sure the Light Brigade must have been made up of Cuthbert Vanes. "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die—"

We rowed in close under the port bow of the sloop, and on the rail I made out a string of faded letters. I began excitedly to spell them out.

"I—s—l—oh, Island Queen! You see she did belong here. Probably she brought the original porcine Adam and Eve to the island."

"Luckily forgot the snake, though!" remarked the Honorable Bertie with unlooked-for vivacity. For so far Aunt Jane's trembling anticipations had been unfulfilled by the sight of a single snake, a fact laid by me to the credit of St. Patrick and by Cookie to that of the pigs.

"Snakes 'd jes' be oysters on de half shell to dem pigs," declared Cookie.

As we rowed away from the melancholy little derelict I saw that near by a narrow gully gave access to the top of the cliff, and I resolved that I would avail myself of this path to visit the Island Queen again. My mind continued to dwell upon the unknown figure of the copra gatherer. Perhaps the loss of his sloop had condemned him to weary months or years of solitude upon the island, before the rare glimmer of a sail or the trail of a steamer's smoke upon the horizon gladdened his longing eyes. Hadn't he grown very tired of pork, and didn't his soul to this day revolt at a ham sandwich? What would he say if he ever discovered that he might have brought away a harvest of gold instead of copra from the island? Last but not least, did not his heart and conscience, if he by chance possessed them, ache horribly at the thought of the forsaken Crusoe?

Suddenly I turned to Cuthbert Vane.

"How do you know, really, that he ever did leave the island?" I demanded.

"Who—the copra chap? Well, why else was the cabin cleared out so carefully—no clothes left about or anything?"

"That's true," I acknowledged. The last occupant of the hut had evidently made a very deliberate and orderly business of packing up to go.

We drifted about the cove for a while, then steered into the dim murmuring shadow of the treasure-cavern. It was filled with dark-green, lisping water, and a continual resonant whispering in which you seemed to catch half-framed words, and the low ripple of laughter. Mr. Vane indicated the point at which they had arrived in their exploration among the fissures opening from the ledge.

The place held me with its fascination, but we dared not linger long, for as the tide turned one man would have much ado to manage the boat. So we slid through the archway into the bright sunshine of the cove, and headed for the camp.

As we neared the beach we saw a figure pacing it. I knew that free stride. It was Dugald Shaw. And quite unexpectedly my heart began to beat with staccato quickness. Dugald Shaw, who didn't like me and never looked at me—except just sometimes, when he was perfectly sure I didn't know it. Dugald Shaw, the silent, unboastful man who had striven and starved and frozen on the dreadful southern ice-fields, who had shared the Viking deeds of the heroes—whom just to think of warmed my heart with a safe, cuddled, little-girl feeling that I had never known since I was a child on my father's knee. There he was, waiting for us, and splashing into the foam to help Cuthbert beach the boat—he for whom a thousand years ago the skalds would have made a saga—

The b. y. hailed him cheerfully as we sprang out upon the sand. But the Scotchman was unsmiling.

"Make haste after your tools, lad," he ordered. "We'll have fine work now to get inside the cave before the turn."

Those were his words; his tone and his grim look meant, So in spite of all my care you are being beguiled by a minx—

It was his tone that I answered.

"Oh, don't scold Mr. Vane!" I implored. "Every paradise has its serpent, and as there are no others here I suppose I am it. Of course all lady serpents who know their business have red hair. Don't blame Mr. Vane for what was naturally all my fault."

Not a line of his face changed. Indeed, before my most vicious stabs it never did change. Though of course it would have been much more civil of him, and far less maddening, to show himself a little bit annoyed.

"To be sure it seems unreasonable to blame the lad," he agreed soberly, "but then he happens to be under my authority."

"Meaning, I suppose, that you would much prefer to blame me," I choked.

"There's logic, no doubt, in striking at the root of the trouble," he admitted, with an air of calm detachment.

"Then strike," I said furiously, "strike, why don't you, and not beat about the bush so!" Because then he would be quite hopelessly in the wrong, and I could adopt any of several roles—the coldly haughty, the wounded but forgiving, etc., with great enjoyment.

But without a change in his glacial manner he quite casually remarked:

"It would seem I had struck—home."

I walked away wishing the dynamite would go off, even if I had to be mixed with Violet till the last trump.

Fortunately nobody undertook to exercise any guardianship over Crusoe, and the little white dog bore me faithful company in my rambles. Mostly these were confined to the neighborhood of the cove. I never ventured beyond Lookout ridge, but there I went often with Crusoe, and we would sit upon a rock and talk to each other about our first encounter there, and the fright he had given me. Everybody else had gone, gazed and admired. But the only constant pilgrim, besides myself, was, of all people, Captain Magnus. Soon between us we had worn a path through the woods to the top of the ridge. The captain's unexpected ardor for scenery carried him thither whenever he had half an hour to spare from the work in the cave. Needless to say, Crusoe and I timed our visits so as not to conflict with his. A less discreet beast than Crusoe would long ere this have sampled the captain's calves, for the sailor missed no sly chance to exasperate the animal. But the wise dog contented himself with such manifestations as a lifted lip and twitching ears, for he had his own code of behavior, and was not to be goaded into departing from it.

One day, as Crusoe and I came down from the ridge, we met Captain Magnus ascending. I had in my hand a small metal-backed mirror, which I had found, surprisingly, lying in a mossy cleft between the rocks. It was a thing such as a man might carry in his pocket, though on the island it seemed unlikely that any one would do' so. I at once attributed the mirror to Captain Magnus, for I knew that no one else had been to the ridge for days. I was wondering as I walked along whether by some sublime law of compensation the captain really thought himself beautiful, and sought this retired spot to admire not the view but his own physiognomy.

When the captain saw me he stopped full in the path. There was a growth of fern on either side. I approached slowly, and, as he did not move, paused, and held out the mirror.

"I think you must have dropped this, Captain Magnus. I found it on the rocks."

For an instant his face changed. His evasive eyes were turned to me searchingly and sharply. He took the glass from my hand and slipped it into his pocket. I made a movement to pass on, then stopped, with a faint dawning of discomfort. For the heavy figure of the captain still blocked the path..

A dark flush had come into the man's face. His yellow teeth showed between his parted lips. His eyes had a swimming brightness.

"What's your hurry?" he remarked, with a certain insinuating emphasis.

I began to tremble.

"I am on my way back to camp, Captain Magnus. Please let me pass."

"It won't do no harm if you're a little late. There ain't no one there keepin' tab. Ain't you always a-strayin' off with the Honorable? I ain't so pretty, but—"

"You are impertinent. Let me pass."

"Oh, I'm impert'nent, am I? That means fresh, maybe. I'm a plain man and don't use frills on my langwidge. Well, when I meets a little skirt that takes my eyes there ain't no harm in lettin' her know it, is there? Maybe the Honorable could say it nicer—"

With a forward stride he laid a hand upon my arm. I shook him off and stepped back. Fear clutched my throat. I had left my revolver in my quarters. Oh, the dreadful denseness of these woods, the certainty that no wildest cry of mine could pierce them!

And then Crusoe, who had been waiting quietly behind me in the path, slipped in between us. Every hair on his neck was bristling. The lifted upper lip snarled unmistakably. He gave me a swift glance which said, Shall I spring?

Quite suddenly the gorilla blandishments of Captain Magnus came to an end.

"Say," he said harshly, "hold back that dog, will you? I don't want to kill the cur."

"You had better not," I returned coldly. "I should have to explain how it happened, you know. As it is I shall say nothing. But I shall not forget my revolver again when I go to walk."

And Crusoe and I went swiftly down the path which the captain no longer disputed.



IX

"LASSIE, LASSIE. . ."

Two or three days later occurred a painful episode. The small unsuspected germ of it had lain ambushed in a discourse of Mr. Shaw's, delivered shortly after our arrival on the island, on the multifarious uses of the cocoa-palm. He told how the juice from the unexpanded flower-spathes is drawn off to form a potent toddy, so that where every prospect pleases man may still be vile. Cookie, experimentally disposed, set to work. Mr. Vane, also experimentally, sampled the results of Cookie's efforts. The liquor had merely been allowed to ferment, whereas a complicated process is necessary for the manufacture of the true arrack, but enough had been achieved to bring about dire consequences for Cuthbert Vane, who had found the liquid cool and refreshing, and was skeptical about its potency.

Aunt Jane took the matter very hard, and rebuked the ribald mirth of Mr. Tubbs. He had to shed tears over a devastating poem called "The Drunkard's Home," before she would forgive him. Cookie made his peace by engaging to vote the prohibition ticket at the next election. My own excuses for the unfortunate were taken in very ill part. My aunt said she had always understood that life in the tropics was very relaxing to the moral fiber, and mine was certainly affected—and besides she wasn't certain that barons wore coronets anyhow.

Mr. Shaw was disturbed over Cuthbert, who was not at all bad, only queer and sleepy, and had to be led away to slumber in retirement. Also, it was an exceptionally low tide and Mr. Shaw had counted on taking advantage of it to work in the cave. Now Cuthbert was laid up—

"You and I will have to manage by ourselves, Magnus."

"Nothing doing—boat got to be patched up—go out there without it and get caught!" growled the captain.

"Well, lend a hand, then. We can be ready with the boat inside an hour."

The captain hesitated queerly. His wandering eyes seemed to be searching in every quarter for something they did not find. At last he mumbled that he thought he felt a touch of the sun, and had decided to lay off for the afternoon and make his way across the island. He said he wanted to shoot water-fowl and that they had all been frightened away from the cove, but that with the glass he had seen them from Lookout thickly about the other bay.

"Very well," said the Scotchman coldly. "I suppose you must suit yourself. I can get the boat in shape without help, I dare say." I saw him presently looking in an annoyed and puzzled fashion after the vanishing figure of the sailor.

Mr. Tubbs and the umbrellas soon disappeared into the woods. I believe the search for Bill Halliwell's tombstone was no longer very actively pursued, and that the trio spent their time ensconced in a snug little nook with hammocks and cushions, where Mr. Tubbs beguiled the time with reading aloud—Aunt Jane and Violet both being provided with literature—and relating anecdotes of his rise to greatness in the financial centers of the country. I more than suspected Mr. Tubbs of feeling that such a bird in the hand as Aunt Jane was worth many doubloons in the bush. But in spite of uneasiness about the future, for the present I rested secure in the certainty that they could not elope from the island, and that there was no one on it with authority to metamorphose Aunt Jane into Mrs. Hamilton H. Tubbs.

The waters of the cove had receded until a fringe of rocks under the high land of the point, usually covered, had been left bare. I had watched the emergence of their black jagged surfaces for some time before it occurred to me that they offered a means of access to the cave. The cave—place of fascination and mystery! Here was the opportunity of all others to explore it, unhampered by any one, just Crusoe and I alone, in the fashion that left me freest to indulge my dreams.

I waited until the Scotchman's back was safely turned, because if he saw me setting forth on this excursion he was quite certain to command me to return, and I had no intention of submitting to his dictatorial ways and yet was not sure how I was successfully to defy him. I believed him capable of haling me lack by force, while tears or even swoons left him unmoved. Of course he would take the absurd ground that the cave was dangerous, in the face of the glaring fact that a girl who had come to this island solely to protect Aunt Jane ought certainly to be able to protect herself. Besides, what right had he to care if I was drowned, anyhow?

But of course I was not going to be.

The retreating tide had left deep pools behind, each a little cosmos of fairy seaweeds and tiny scuttling crabs and rich and wonderful forms of life which were strange to me. Crusoe and I were very much interested, and lingered a good deal on the way. But at last we reached the great archway, and passed with a suddenness which was like a plunge into cool water from the hot glare of the tropic sunshine into the green shadow of the cavern.

At the lower end, between the two arches, a black, water-worn rock paving rang under one's feet. Further in under the point the floor of the cave was covered with white sand. All the great shadowy place was murmuring like a vast sea-shell. Beyond the southern archway spread the limitless heaving plain of the Pacific. Near at hand bare black rocks rose from the surges, like skeletons of the land that the sea had devoured. And after a while these walls that supported the cavern roof would be nibbled away, and the roof would fall, and the waves roar victorious over the ruins.

I wished I could visit the place in darkness. It would be thrice as mysterious, filled with its hollow whispering echoes, as in the day. I dreamed of it as it might have been when a boat from the Bonny Lass crept in, and the faint winking eye of a lantern struck a gleam from the dark waters and showed nothing all around but blackness, and more blackness.

From the ledge far above my head led off those narrow, teasing crevices in which the three explorers did their unrewarded burrowing. I could see the strands of a rope ladder lying coiled at the edge of the shelf, where it was secured by spikes. The men dragged down the ladder with a boat-hook when they wanted to ascend. I looked about with a hope that perhaps they had left the boat-hook somewhere.

I found no boat-hook but instead a spade, which had been driven deep into the sand and left, too firmly imbedded for the tide to bear away. At once a burning hope that I, alone and unassisted, might bring to light the treasure of the Bonny Lass seethed in my veins. I jerked the spade loose and fell to.

I now discovered the great truth that digging for treasure is the most thrilling and absorbing occupation known to man. Time ceased to be, and the weight of the damp and close-packed sand seemed, that of feathers. This temporary state of exaltation passed, to be sure, and the sand got very heavy, and my back ached, but still I dug. Crusoe watched proceedings interestedly at first, then wandered off on business of his own. Presently he returned and began to fuss about and bark. He was a restless little beast, wanting to be always on the move. He came and tugged at my skirt, uttering an uneasy whine.

"Be quiet, Crusoe!" I commanded, threatening him with my spade. The madness of the treasure-lust possessed me. I was panting now, and my hands began to feel like baseball mitts, but still I dug. Crusoe had ceased to importune me; vaguely I was aware that he had got tired and run off. I toiled on, pausing now and then for breath. I was leaning on my spade, rather dejectedly considering the modest excavation I had achieved, when I felt a little cool splash at my feet. Dropping my spade I whirled around—and a shriek echoed through the cave as I saw pouring into it the dark insidious torrent of the returning tide.

How had I forgotten it, that deadly thing, muttering to itself out there, ready to spring back like an unleashed beast? Crusoe had warned me—and then he had forsaken me, and I was alone.

And yet at first, wild as my terror was, I had no thought but that somehow I could escape. That these waters were for me the very face of death, sure and relentless, terrible and slow, did not at once seize hold upon my heart.

Frantically I sprang for the entrance on the cove. The floor of the cave was sloping, and the water deepened swiftly as I advanced. Soon I was floundering to my knees, and on the instant a great wave rushed in, drenching me to the waist, dazing me with its spray and uproar, and driving me back to the far end of the cave.

With a dreadful hollow sucking sound the surge retreated. I staggered again toward the archway that was my only door to life. The water was deeper now, and swiftly came another fierce inrush of the sea that drove me back. Between the two archways a terrible current was setting. It poured along with the rush of a mountain river, wild, dark, tumultuous.

I had fled to the far end of the cave, but the sea pursued me. Swiftly the water climbed—it flung me against the wall, then dragged me back. I clutched at the naked rock with bleeding fingers.

Again, after a paroxysm during which I had seemed to stand a great way off and listen to my own shrieks, there came to me a moment of calm. I knew that my one tenuous thread of hope lay in launching myself into that wild flood that was tearing through into the cove. I was not a strong swimmer, but a buoyant one. I might find refuge on some half-submerged rock on the shores of the cove—at least I should perish in the open, in the sunlight, not trapped like a desperate rat. And I began to fight my way toward the opening.

And then a dreadful vision flashed across my mind, weighed down my feet like lead, choked back even the cry from my frozen lips. Sharks! The black cutting fin, the livid belly, the dreadful jaws opening—no, no, better to die here, better the clean embrace of the waters—if indeed the sharks did not come into the cave.

And then I think I went quite mad. I remember trying to climb up to the ledge which hung beetling fifteen feet above. Afterward my poor hands showed how desperately. And I remember that once I slipped and went clear under, and how I choked and strangled in the salt water. For my mouth was always open, screaming, screaming continually.

And when I saw the boat fighting its way inch by inch into the cave I was sure that it was a vision, and that only my own wild beseeching of him to save me had made the face of Dugald Shaw arise before my dying eyes. Dugald Shaw was still mending the boat on the shore of the cove, and this was a mocking phantom.

Only the warm human clasp of the arms that drew me into the boat made me believe in him.

The boat bobbed quietly in the eddy at the far end of the cave, while a wet, sobbing, choking heap clung to Dugald Shaw. I clasped him about the neck and would not let him go, for fear that I should find myself alone again, perishing in the dark water. My head was on his breast, and he was pressing back my wet hair with strong and tender hands.

What was this he was saying? "My lassie, my little, little lassie!"

And no less incredible than this it was to feel his cheek pressed, very gently, against my hair—

After a little my self-control came back to me. I stopped my senseless childish crying, lifted my head and tried to speak. I could only whisper, "You came, you came!"

"Of course I came!" he said huskily. "There, don't tremble so—you are safe—safe in my arms!"

After a while he lifted me into the stern and began to maneuver the boat out of the cave. I suppose at another time I should have realized the peril of it. The fierce flow through the archway all but swamped us, the current threatened to hurl us against the rocks, but I felt no fear. He had come to save me, and he would. All at once the dreadful shadow of the cavern was left behind, and the sunshine immersed my chilled body like a draught of wine. I lay huddled in the stern, my cheek upon my hand, as he rowed swiftly across the cove and drove the boat upon the beach.

Everybody but Captain Magnus was assembled there, including Crusoe. Crusoe it was who had given warning of my danger. Like a wise little dog, when I ignored his admonitions he had run home. At first his uneasiness and troubled barking had got no notice. Once or twice the Scotchman, worried by his fretfulness, had ordered him away. Then across his preoccupied mind there flashed a doubt. He laid down his tools and spoke to the animal. Instantly Crusoe dashed for the rocks, barking and crying with eagerness. But the path was closed, the tide was hurrying in, and Crusoe whined pitiably as he crept back and crouched against the man who of course knew better than a little dog what must be done.

Then Mr. Shaw understood. He snatched the painter of the boat and dragged it down the beach. He was shoving off as Cookie, roused by Crusoe's barking, appeared from the seclusion of his afternoon siesta. To him were borne the Scotchman's parting words:

"Virginia Harding—in the cave—hot blankets—may be drowning—"

"And at dat," said Cookie, relating his part in the near-tragedy with unction, "I jes' natchully plumped right down on mah ma'ah bones and wrestled with de Lawd in prayah."

This unique proceeding on Cookie's part necessarily awoke the interest both of the recovered Cuthbert Vane, just emerging after his prolonged slumbers, and of the trio who had that moment returned from the woods. Importuned for an explanation, Cookie arose from his devotional posture and put the portentous query:

"Mistah Vane, sah, be dey any propah coffin-wood on dis yere island?"

Instantly connecting my absence with this terrible question, Aunt Jane shrieked and fell into the arms of Mr. Tubbs. I got the story from Cuthbert Vane, and I must say I was unpleasantly struck by the facility with which my aunt seemed to have fallen into Mr. Tubbs's embrace—as if with the ease of habit. Mr. Tubbs, it appeared, had staggered a little under his fair burden, which was not to be wondered at, for Aunt Jane is of an overflowing style of figure and Mr. Tubbs more remarkable for brain than brawn. Violet, however, had remained admirably calm, and exhorted Aunt Jane to remember that whatever happened it was all for the best.

"Poor Violet," I commented. "To think that after all it didn't happen!"

A slow flush rose to the cheeks of the beautiful youth. He was sitting beside the hammock, where I was supposed to be recuperating. Of course it was to please Aunt Jane that I had to be an invalid, and she had insisted on mounting guard and reading aloud from one of Miss Browne's books about Psycho-evolution or something until Cuthbert Vane came along and relieved her—and me.

"It would have happened, though," said the Honorable Cuthbert solemnly, "if it hadn't been for old Shaw. I can't get over it, Vir—Miss Virginia, that I wasn't on deck myself, you know. Here's old Dugald been doing the heroic all his life, and now he gets his chance again while I'm sleeping off those bally cocoanuts. It's hard on a chap. I—I wish it had been me."

However dubious his grammar, there was no mistaking the look that brightened like the dawn in the depths of his clear eyes. My breath went from me suddenly.

"Oh," I cried excitedly, "isn't that—-yes, I thought it was the dinner gong!"

For as if in response to my dire need, the clang of Cookie's gong echoed through the island silences.



X

WHAT CRUSOE AND I FOUND

When after those poignant moments in the boat I met Dugald Shaw in commonplace fashion at the table, a sudden, queer, altogether unprecedented shyness seized me. I sat looking down at my plate with the gaucherie of a silly child.

The episode of the afternoon provided Mr. Tubbs with ammunition for a perfect fusillade of wit. He warned Mr. Shaw that hereafter he might expect Neptune to have a grudge against him for having robbed the sea-god of his beauteous prey. I said I thought most likely it was not Neptune that was robbed but sharks, but sharks not being classic, Mr. Tubbs would have none of them. He said he believed that if Mr. Shaw had not inopportunely arrived, Neptune with his tripod would soon have up-reared upon the wave.

"Oh—tripod, Mr. Tubbs?" I said inquiringly.

"Yes, sure," he returned undaunted. "Them camera supports is named for it, you know. But of course this gay gink of a Sandy had to come buttin' in. Too bad the Honorable Bertie had partook so free. He'd have looked the part all right when it come to rescuin' beauty in distress. But Fortune bein' a lady and naturally capricious, she hands the stunt over to old Sobersides here."

Just then old Sobersides cut across the flow of Mr. Tubbs's sprightly conversation and with a certain harshness of tone asked Captain Magnus if he had had good sport on the other side of the island. Captain Magnus, as usual, had seemed to feel that time consecrated to eating was wasted in conversation. At this point-blank question he started confusedly, stuttered, and finally explained that though he had taken a rifle he had carried along pistol cartridges, so had come home with an empty bag.

At this moment I happened to be looking at Cookie, who was setting down a dish before Mr. Tubbs. The negro started visibly, and rolled his eyes at Captain Magnus with astonishment depicted in every dusky feature. He said nothing, although wont to take part in our conversation as it suited him, but I saw him shake his great grizzled head in a disturbed and puzzled fashion as he turned away.

After this a chill settled on the table. You felt a disturbance in the air, as though wireless currents were crossing and recrossing in general confusion. Mr. Tubbs began again on the topic of my rescue, and said it was too bad Mr. Shaw's name wasn't Paul, because then we'd be Paul and Virginia, he, he! My aunt said encouragingly, how true! because they had lived on an island, hadn't they? She had read the book many years ago, and had mostly forgotten it, not having Mr. Tubbs's marvelous memory, but she believed there was something quite sad about the end, though very sweet. She agreed with Mr. Tubbs that Mr. Vane would have looked most picturesque going to the rescue on account of his sash, and it was too bad he had not been able, but never mind, it was most kind of Mr. Shaw, and she was sure her niece appreciated it though she was afraid she hadn't thanked Mr. Shaw properly.

By this time it was perfectly clear that Mr. Shaw had been most inconsiderate in dashing out after me in that thoughtless manner. He should have waked Cuthbert Vane and helped him to array himself becomingly in the sash and then sent for a moving-picture man to go out in another boat and immortalize the touching scene. All this came seething to my lips, but I managed to suppress it. It was only on Cuthbert Vane's account. As for my aunt and Mr. Tubbs, I could have bumped their heads together as remorselessly as two cocoanuts. I understood Aunt Jane, of course. In spite of the Honorable Cuthbert's recent lapse, her imagination still played about certain little cards which should announce to an envious world my engagement to the Honorable Cuthbert Patrick Ruthmore Vane, of High Staunton Manor, Kent. So such a faux pas as my rescue from drowning by a penniless Scotch seaman couldn't but figure in her mind as a grievance.

I stole a glance at the recipient of these sorry thanks. His face was set and—once I should have called it grim, but I knew better now. There was nothing I could say or do. Any words of mine would have sounded forced and puerile. What he had done was so far beyond thanks that spoken gratitude belittled it. And yet, suppose he thought that like the rest I had wished another in his place? Did he think that—could he, with the memory of my arms about his neck?

I only knew that because of the foolish hateful words that had been said, the gulf between us was wider than before.

I sat dumb, consumed with misery and hoping that perhaps I might meet his glance and so tell him silently all that words would only mar. But he never looked at me. And then the first bitterness, which had made even Cuthbert seem disloyal in wishing himself in his friend's place, passed, and gave way to dreary doubt. Cuthbert knew, of course, that he himself would have prized—what to Dugald Shaw was a matter of indifference. Yes, that was it, and the worst that Dugald Shaw was suffering now was boredom at hearing the affair so everlastingly discussed.

So I began talking very fast to Mr. Vane and we were very gay and he tied his own necktie on Crusoe on consideration that he be held hereafter jointly. And—because I saw that Dugald Shaw was looking now—I smiled lingeringly into the eyes of the beautiful youth and said all right, perhaps we needn't quarrel over our mutual dog, and then skipped off lightsomely, feeling exactly like a scorpion that has been wounding itself with its own sting.

As I passed Cookie at his dishpan a sudden thought struck me.

"Cookie," I remarked, "you had a frightfully queer look just now when Captain Magnus told about having taken the wrong cartridges. What was the matter?"

Cookie took his hands out of the water and wiped off the suds, casting about stealthy and mysterious glances. Then he rolled a dubious eye at me.

"What was it, Cookie?" I urged.

"War am Cap'n now?"

"Down on the beach; he can't possibly hear you."

"You won't say nothin' to git Cookie in a rumpus?"

"Cross my heart to die, Cookie."

"Well, den"—Cookie spoke in a hoarse whisper—"Cap'n say he forgit to take his gun ca'tridges. Miss Jinny, when he come back, I see him empty his gun ca'tridges out'n his belt and put back his pistol cartridges. So dere now!"

I turned from Cookie, too surprised to speak. Why had Captain Magnus been at pains to invent a lie about so trivial a matter? I recalled, too, that Mr. Shaw's question had confused him, that he had hesitated and stammered before answering it. Why? Was he a bad shot and ashamed of it? Had he preferred to say that he had taken the wrong ammunition rather than admit that he could get no bag? That must be the explanation, because there was no other. Certainly no imaginable errand but the one assigned could have taken the captain to the other side of the island.

Several days went by, and still the treasure was unfound. Of course, as the unexplored space in the cave contracted, so daily the probability grew stronger that Fortune would shed her golden smile upon us before night. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that the optimistic spirits of most were beginning to flag a little. Only Mr. Shaw, though banned as a confirmed doubter and pessimist, now by the exercise of will kept the others to their task. It took all Cuthbert Vane's loyalty, plus an indisposition to be called a slacker, to strive against the temptation to renounce treasure-hunting in favor of roaming with Crusoe and me. As for Captain Magnus, his restlessness was manifest. Several times he had suggested blowing the lid off the island with dynamite, as the shortest method of getting at the gold. He was always vanishing on solitary excursions inland.

Mr. Tubbs remarked, scornfully, that a man with a nose for money ought to have smelted out the chest before this, but if his own nasal powers were of that character he did not offer to employ them in the service of the expedition. Miss Higglesby-Browne, however, had taken to retiring to the hut for long private sessions with herself. My aunt reverentially explained their purpose. The hiding-place of the chest being of course known to the Universal Wisdom, all Violet had to do was to put herself in harmony and the knowledge would be hers. The difficulty was that you had first to overcome your Mundane Consciousness. To accomplish this Violet was struggling in the solitude of the hut.

Meanwhile Mr. Tubbs sat at the feet of Aunt Jane, reading aloud from a volume entitled Paeans of Passion, by a celebrated lady lyric poet of our own land.

After my meeting with Captain Magnus in the forest, Lookout Ridge was barred to me. Crusoe and I must do our rambling in other directions. This being so, I bethought me again of the wrecked sloop lying under the cliffs on the north shore of the cove. I remembered that there had seemed to be a way down the cliffs. I resolved to visit the sloop again. The terrible practicality of the beautiful youth made it difficult to indulge in romantic musings in his presence. And to me a derelict brings a keener tang of romance than any other relic of man's multitudinous and futile strivings.

The descent of the gully proved an easy matter, and soon I was on the sand beside the derelict. Sand had heaped up around her hull, and filled her cockpit level with the rail, and drifted down the companion, stuffing the little cabin nearly to the roof, Only the bow rose free from the white smother of sand. Whatever wounds there were in her buried sides were hidden. You felt that some wild caprice of the storm had lifted her and set her down here, not too roughly, then whirled away and left her to the sand.

Crusoe slipped into the narrow space under the roof of the cabin, and I leaned idly down to watch him through a warped seam between the planks. Then I found that I was looking, not at Crusoe, but into a little dim enclosure like a locker, in which some small object faintly caught the light. With a revived hope of finding relics I got out my knife—a present from Cuthbert Vane—and set briskly to work widening the seam.

I penetrated finally into a small locker or cubby-hole, set in the angle under the roof of the cabin, and, as subsequent investigation showed, so placed as to attract no notice from the casual eye. I ascertained this by lying down and wriggling my head and shoulders into the cabin. In other words, I had happened on a little private depository, in which the owner of the sloop might stow away certain small matters that concerned him intimately. Yet the contents of the locker at first seemed trifling. They were an old-fashioned chased silver shoe-buckle, and a brown-covered manuscript book.

The book had suffered much from dampness, whether of rains or the wash of the sea. The imitation leather cover was flaking off, and the leaves were stuck together. I seated myself on the cabin roof, extracted a hairpin, and began carefully separating the close-written pages. The first three or four were quite illegible, the ink having run. Then the writing became clearer. I made out a word here and there:

. . . . directions vague . . . . my grandfather . . . . man a ruffian but . . . . no motive . . . . police of Havana . . . . frightful den . . . . grandfather made sure . . . . registry . . . . Bonny Lass . . . .

And at that I gave a small excited shriek which brought Crusoe to me in a hurry. What had he to do, the writer of this journal, what had he to do with the Bonny Lass?

Breathlessly I read on:

. . . . thought captain still living but not sure . . . . lost . . . . Benito Bon . . . .

I closed the book. Now, while the coast was clear, I must get back to camp. It would take hours, perhaps days, to decipher the journal which had suddenly become of such supreme importance. I must smuggle it unobserved into my own quarters, where I could read at my leisure. As I set out I dropped the silver shoe-buckle into my pocket, smiling to think that it was I who had discovered the first bit of precious metal on the island. Yet the book in my hand, I felt instinctively, was of more value than many shoe-buckles.

Safely in my hammock, with a pillow under which I could slip the book in case of interruption, I resumed the reading. From this point on, although the writing was somewhat faded, it was all, with a little effort, legible.

THE DIARY

If Sampson did live to tell his secret, then any day there may be a sail in the offing. And still I can not find it! Oh, if my grandfather had been more worldly wise! If he hadn't been too intent on the eternal welfare of the man he rescued from the Havana tavern brawl to question him about his story. A cave on Leeward Island—near by a stone marked with the letters B. H. and a cross-bones—I told the captain, said the poor dying wretch, we wouldn't have no luck after playing it that low down on Bill! So I presume Bill lies under the stone.

Well, all I have is in this venture. The old farm paid for the Island Queen—or will, if I don't get back in time to prevent foreclosure. All my staid New England relatives think me mad. A copra gatherer! A fine career for a minister's son! Think how your father scrimped to send you to college—Aunt Sarah reproached me. Well, when I get home with my Spanish doubloons there will be another story to tell. I won't be poor crazy Peter then. And Helen—oh, how often I wish I had told her everything! It was too much to ask her to trust me blindly as I did. But from the moment I came across the story in grandfather's old, half-forgotten diary—by the way, the diary habit seems to run in the family—a very passion of secrecy has possessed me. If I had told Helen, I should have had to dread that even in her sweet sleep she might whisper something to put that ferret, her stepmother, on the scent. Oh, Helen, trust me, trust me!

December 25. I have a calendar with me, so I am not reduced to notching a stick to keep track of the days. I mark each off carefully in the calendar. If I were to forget to do this, even for a day or two, I believe I should quite lose track. The days are so terribly alike!

My predecessor here in the copra-gathering business, old Heintz, really left me a very snug establishment. It was odd that I should have run across him at Panama that way. I sounded him on the question of treasure. He said placidly that of course the island had been the resort of Edward Davis and Benito Bonito and others of the black flag gentry, and he thought it very likely they had left some of their spoils behind them, but though he had done a little investigating as he had time he had come on nothing but a ship's lantern, a large iron kettle, and the golden setting of a bracelet from which the jewels had been removed. He had already disposed of the bracelet. The kettle I found here, and sank in the spring to keep the water clear. (Where it still is. V. H.) Evidently old Heintz knew nothing of the Bonny Lass. This was an immense satisfaction, as it proves that the story can not have been noised about.

Christmas Day! I wonder what they are all doing at home? December 28. Of course the cave under the point is the logical place. I have been unable to find any stone marked B. H. on the ground above it, but I fear that a search after Bill's tombstone would be hopeless. Although the formation of the island is of the sort to contain numerous caves, still they must be considerably less plentiful than possible tombstones. Under circumstances such as those of the mate's story, it seems to me that all the probabilities point to their concealing the chest in the cave with an opening on the bay. It must have been necessary for them to act as quickly as possible, that their absence from the ship might go unnoticed—though I believe the three conspirators had made the crew drunk. Then to get the boat, laden with the heavy chest, through the surf to any of the other caves—if the various cracks and fissures I have seen are indeed properly to be called caves—would be stiff work for three men. Yes, everything indicates the cavern under the point. The only question is, isn't it indicated too clearly? Would a smooth old scoundrel such as this Captain Sampson must have been have hidden his treasure in the very place certain to be ransacked if the secret ever got out? Unless it was deeply buried, which it could have been only at certain stages of the tide, even old Heintz would have been apt to come across it in the course of his desultory researches for the riches of the buccaneers. And I am certain placid old Heintz did not mislead me. Besides, at Panama, he was making arrangements to go with some other Germans on a small business venture to Samoa, which he would not have been likely to do if he had just unearthed a vast fortune in buried treasure. Still, I shall explore the cave thoroughly, though with little hope.

Oh, Helen, if I could watch these tropic stars with you to-night!

January 6. I think I am through with the cave under the point—the Cavern of the Two Arches, I have named it. It is a dangerous place to work in alone, and my little skiff has been badly battered several times. But I peered into every crevice in the walls, and sounded the sands with a drill. I suppose I would have made a more thorough job of it if I had not been convinced from the first that the chest was not there. It was not reason that told me so—I know I may well be attributing too much subtlety of mind to Captain Sampson—but that strange guiding instinct—to put it in its lowest terms—which I know in my heart I must follow if I would succeed. Shall I ever forget the feeling that stirred me when first I turned the pages of my grandfather's diary and saw there, in his faded writing, the story of the mate of the Bonny Lass, who died in Havana in my grandfather's arms? My grandfather had gone as supercargo in his own ship, and while he did a good stroke of business in Havana—trust his shrewd Yankee instincts for that—he managed to combine the service of God with that of Mammon. Many a poor drunken sailor, taking his fling ashore in the bright, treacherous, plague-ridden city, found in him a friend, as did the mate of the Bonny Lass in his dying hour. Oh, if my good grandfather had but made sure from the man's own lips exactly where the treasure lay! It is enough to make one fancy that the unknown Bill, who paid for too much knowledge with his life, has his own fashion of guarding the hoard. But I ramble. I was going to say, that from the moment when I learned from my grandfather's diary of the existence of the treasure, I have been driven by an impulse more overmastering than anything I have ever experienced in my life. It was, I believe, what old-fashioned pious folk would call a leading. The impetus seemed somehow to come from outside my own organism. All my life I had been irresolute, the sport of circumstances, trifling with this and that, unable to set my face steadfastly toward any goal. Yet never, since I have trodden this path, have I looked to right or left. I have defied both human opinion and the obstacles which an unfriendly fate has thrown in my way. All alone, I, a sailor hitherto of pleasure-craft among the bays and islands of the New England coast, put forth in my little sloop for a voyage of three hundred miles on the loneliest wastes of the Pacific. All alone, did I say? No, there was Benjy the faithful. His head is at my knee as I write. He knows, I think, that his master's mood is sad to-night. Oh, Helen, if you ever see these lines, will you realize how I have longed for you—how it sometimes seems that my soul must tear itself loose from my body and speed to you across half a world?

February 1. Since my last record my time has been well filled. In the Island Queen I have been surveying the coasts of my domain, sailing as close in as I dared, and taking note of every crevice that might be the mouth of a cave. Then, either in the rowboat or by scrambling down the cliffs, I visit the indicated point. It is bitterly hard labor, but it has its compensations. I am growing hale and strong, brown and muscular. Aunt Sarah won't offer me any more of her miserable decoctions when I go home. Heading first toward the north, I am systematically making the rounds of the island, for, after all, how do I know for certain that Captain Sampson buried his treasure near the east anchorage? For greater security he may have chosen the other side, where there is another bay, I should judge deeper and freer of rocks than this one, though more open to storms.

So far I have discovered half a dozen caves, most of them quite small. Any one of them seemed such a likely place that at first I was quite hopeful. But I have found nothing. Usually, the floor of the cave beneath a few inches of sand is rock. Only in the great cave under the point have I found sand to any depth. The formation in some cases is little more than a hardened clay, but to excavate it would require long toil, probably blasting—and I have no explosives. And I go always on the principle that Captain Sampson and his two assistants had not time for any elaborate work of concealment. Most likely they laid the chest in some natural niche. Sailors are unskilled in the use of such implements as spades, and besides, the very heart of the undertaking was haste and secrecy. They must have worked at night and between two tides, for few of the caves can be reached except at the ebb. And I take it as certain that the cave must have opened directly on the sea. For three men to transport such a weight and bulk by land would be sheer impossibility.

February 10. To-day a strange, strange thing happened—so strange, so wonderful and glorious that it ought to be recorded in luminous ink. And I owe it all to Benjy! Little dog, you shall go in a golden collar and eat lamb-chops every day! This morning—

Across my absorption in the diary cut the unwelcome clangor of Cookie's gong. Right on the breathless edge of discovery I was summoned, with my thrilling secret in my breast, to join my unsuspecting companions. I hid the book carefully in my cot. Not until the light of to-morrow morning could I return to its perusal. How I was to survive the interval I did not know. But on one point my mind was made up—no one should dream of the existence of the diary until I knew all that it had to impart.



XI

MISS BROWNE HAS A VISION

Perhaps because of the secret excitement under which I was laboring, I seemed that evening unusually aware of the emotional fluctuations of those about me. Violet looked grimmer than ever, so that I judged her struggles with her mundane consciousness to have been exceptionally severe. Captain Magnus seemed even beyond his wont restless, loose-jointed and wandering-eyed, and performed extraordinary feats of sword-swallowing. Mr. Shaw was very silent, and his forehead knitted now and then into a reflective frown. As for myself, I had much ado to hide my abstraction, and turned cold from head to foot with alarm when I heard my own voice addressing Crusoe as Benjy.

A faint ripple of surprise passed round the table.

"Named your dog over again, Miss Jinny?" inquired Mr. Tubbs. Mr. Tubbs had adopted a facetiously paternal manner toward me. I knew in anticipation of the moment when he would invite me to call him Uncle Ham.

"I say, you know," expostulated Cuthbert Vane, "I thought Crusoe rather a nice name. Never heard of any chap named Benjy that lived on an island."

"When I was a little girl, Virginia," remarked Aunt Jane, with the air of immense age and wisdom which she occasionally assumed, "my grandmother—your great-grandmother, of course, my love—would never allow me to name my dolls a second time. She did not approve of changeableness. And I am sure it must be partly due to your great-grandmother's teaching that I always know my own mind directly about everything. She was quite a remarkable woman, and very firm. Firmness has been considered a family trait with us. When her husband died—your great-grandfather, you know, dear—she rose above her grief and made him take some very disagreeable medicine to the very last, long after the doctors had given up hope. As some relation or other said, I think your Great-Aunt Susan's father-in-law, anybody else would have allowed poor John Harding to die in peace, but trust Eliza to be firm to the end."

Under cover of this bit of family history I tried to rally from my confusion, but I knew my cheeks were burning. Looks of deepening surprise greeted the scarlet emblems of discomfiture that I hung out.

"By heck, bet there's a feller at home named Benjy!" cackled Mr. Tubbs shrilly, and for once I blessed him.

Aunt Jane turned upon him her round innocent eyes.

"Oh, no, Mr. Tubbs," she assured him, "I don't think a single one of them was named Benjy!"

The laughter which followed this gave me time to get myself in hand again.

"Crusoe it is and will be," I asserted. "Like Great-Grandmother Harding, I don't approve of changeableness. It happens that a girl I know at home has a dog named Benjy." Which happened fortunately to be true, for otherwise I should have been obliged to invent it. But the girl is a cat, and the dog a miserable little high-bred something, all shivers and no hair. I should never have thought of him in the same breath with Crusoe.

That evening Mr. Shaw addressed the gathering at the camp-fire—which we made small and bright, and then sat well away from because of the heat—and in a few words gave it as his opinion that any further search in the cave under the point was useless. (If he had known the strange confirmatory echo which this awoke in my mind!) He proposed that the shore of the island to a reasonable distance on either side of the bay-entrance should be surveyed, with a view to discover whether some other cave did not exist which would answer the description given by the dying Hopperdown as well as that first explored.

Mr. Shaw's words were addressed to the ladies, the organizer and financier, respectively, of the expedition, to the very deliberate exclusion of Mr. Tubbs. But he might as well have made up his mind to recognize the triumvirate. Enthroned on a camp-chair sat Aunt Jane, like a little goddess of the Dollar Sign, and on one hand Mr. Tubbs smiled blandly, and on the other Violet gloomed. You saw that in secret council Mr. Shaw's announcement had been foreseen and deliberated upon.

Mr. Tubbs, who understood very well the role of power behind the throne, left it to Violet to reply. And Miss Browne, who carried an invisible rostrum with her wherever she went, now alertly mounted it.

"My friends," she began, "those dwelling on a plane where the Material is all may fail to grasp the thought which I shall put before you this evening. They may not understand that if a different psychic atmosphere had existed on this island from the first we should not now be gazing into a blank wall of Doubt. My friends, this expedition was, so to speak, called from the Void by Thought. Thought it was, as realized in steamships and other ephemeral forms, which bore us thither over rolling seas. How then can it be otherwise than that Thought should influence our fortunes—that success should be unable to materialize before a persistent attitude of Negation? My friends, you will perceive that there is no break in this sequence of ideas; all is remorseless logic.

"In order to withdraw myself from this atmosphere of Negation, for these several days past I have sought seclusion. There in silence I have asserted the power of Positive over Negative Thought, gazing meanwhile into the profound depths of the All. My friends, an answer has been vouchsafed us; I have had a vision of that for which we seek. Now at last, in a spirit of glad confidence, we may advance. For, my friends, the chest is buried—in sand."

With this triumphant announcement Miss Higglesby-Browne sat down. A heavy silence succeeded. It was broken by a murmur from Mr. Tubbs.

"Wonderful—that's what I call wonderful! Talk about the eloquence of the ancients—I believe, by gum, this is on a par with Congressional oratory!"

"A vision, Miss Browne," said Mr. Shaw gravely, "must be an interesting thing. I have never seen one myself, having no talents that way, but in the little Scotch town of Dumbiedykes where I was born there was an old lady with a remarkable gift of the second sight. Simple folk, not being acquainted with the proper terms to fit the case, called her the Wise Woman. Well, one day my aunt had been to the neighboring town of Micklestane, five miles off, and on the way back to Dumbiedykes she lost her purse. It had three sovereigns in it—a great sum to my aunt. In her trouble of mind she hurried to the Wise Woman—a thing to make her pious father turn in his grave. The Wise Woman—gazed into the All, I suppose, and told my aunt not to fret herself, for she had had a vision of the purse and it lay somewhere on the food between Micklestane and Dumbiedykes.