horizon. Left to her own devices, Garry and listlessly scanned the Miss Etherington, in obedience to an idea which had been obtruding itself upon her all morning, entered the cave and inspected her cork jacket, which lay neatly rolled up upon a ledge. Upon its outer surface, as already related, was neatly stencilled the legend, S.Y. Island Queen, R.Y.S.State Room No. 3. She returned an hour later. The expression upon her features would have been ascribed by an Very slowly and reflectively Miss Etherington rolled up the jacket and put it back upon its ledge. Then, quitting the cave, she climbed up upon Point expert in physiognomy to the workings of a guilty but unrepentant spirit. Presently she awoke Mr Leslie Gale, and set before him. an evening meal whose excellence she did her best to discount by a display of cold aloofness which would have blighted the appetite of a less determined optimist. V. "My hole, I think," said Mr which had been employed upon Gale. "Well," remarked Miss Etherington with asperity, "if lizards are going to lie across the line of my putt on every green, I don't see how you can help winning a hole occasionally." "These things will happen on sporting courses," said Mr Gale sympathetically. "Still you could have taken advantage of the by-law which says that lizards may be lifted or swept aside (but not pressed down) without penalty. Now for Point Garry! You get a stroke here. All square and one to play." They stood upon the seventeenth green of the Island golfcourse. Their clubs were two home-made instruments of the hockey - stick variety, their equipment being completed by a couple of solid but wellgnawed indiarubber dog balls, the yacht to afford recreation and exercise to their hostess's terriers. It was five o'clock in the afternoon. Supply, as represented by Mr Gale, the purveyor, having temporarily satisfied Demand, as represented by Miss Etherington, the housekeeper, with sufficient comestibles and combustibles for the next twenty-four hours, the pair were indulging in a little exercise before proceeding from labour to refreshment. The golf-course was an abiding joy. It had been opened with much ceremony a fortnight ago, Miss Etherington driving off the first ball from the first tee, and Mr Gale gallantly retrieving the same from the Pacific Ocean. There were eighteen holes, ranging from five to seventy yards in length, and the course abounded in natural hazards of the most diverse description. There were no caddies, but, as Mr Gale remarked, a caddy when you possess only one club looks ostentatious. The golf-course is a characteristic product of British occupation of alien territory. John Bull, we all know, has a weakness for descending casually upon the unappropriated spaces of the earth, the fact that they do not strictly belong to him being, in his view, fully balanced by the fact that he causes them to prosper as they have never prospered before. If you make a desert, he argues, blossom like the rose, what does it matter whose desert it was previously? His methods of procedure seldom vary, whether he be an official manin - possession or a younger son in search of 8 career. Having adjusted the local constitution to his satisfaction, he sets to work to assist the slightly flustered inhabitants to make the place pay. After that he lays out a golf-course. There being no inhabitants upon the island, and consequently no laws to adjust, our friends had been able to get to work on the golf-course at once. Their new life had altered them surprisingly little. After three months of a semisavage existence, so far from reverting to the service of primitive Nature, they had adapted Nature to the requirements of modern society and turned the island into a very fair imitation of a fashionable health resort. Had they been of another of caste-say, the mechanicalthey would have impressed their mark in another fashion none the less indelible. There would have been water-wheels, mills, and sluices. Being of the class called leisured, accustomed to extract as much enjoyment from life as possible, and on no account ever to worry about anything, they had settled down in one of Nature's most typical strongholds to the nearest approach they could compass to the careless artificial life that they were accustomed to live. And SO powerful are use and wont, that these two unruffled Britons bade fair Britons bade fair to expel Nature from her own stronghold. Cave man and cave woman they certainly were not yet. They were members of a class which has always been carelessly indifferent to outside influences, and does not easily change its habits or mode of speech. Consequently the island had not barbarised them. They were gently denaturalising the island. Mr Gale took the eighteenth hole in a perfect nine, Miss Etherington's ball overrunning the green and taking refuge in a lie with which only a corkscrew could have coped. The victor having offered to the vanquished the insincere. insincere condolences usual upon such occasions, the pair sat down amicably enough to enjoy the afternoon breeze. "What is for dinner tonight?" inquired Mr Gale. sar "Turtles' eggs, fried dines, biscuits, and bananas,' replied Miss Etherington. fashion of the stage brigand "It's the last tin of sardines or coon. Just now she was unfastening the knot of this contrivance. but one." "Oh! How are the stores in general lasting out?" "There seems to be plenty of most things. We were rather extravagant at first, but since you developed into such a mighty hunter--" "And you into such a nailing housekeeper." "We have become almost self-supporting." At this fulsome interchange of compliments the pair turned and smiled upon one another. "And we seem to thrive on it," said Mr Gale complacently. "I must have gone up a stone in weight, and I feel as skittish as a young unicorn. You look pretty fit, too." He turned and surveyed his companion. She was wearing the smart blue skirt in which she had landed on the island, sadly frayed and bleached, but still bearing the imprimatur of Dover Street, together with a flannel cricket-shirt. Round her neck was knotted a coloured handkerchief. Her feet were bare. The hairpin difficulty had never been overcome, and Miss Etherington usually kept her rippling mane plaited into a convenient pigtail. That appendage having developed a habit at the end of a full swing of dealing its owner a severe buffet in the face, it was Miss Etherington's custom when playing golf to gather her locks into a heap upon the top of her head, and confine the same within a coloured headband, after the Mr Gale, discoursing at ease upon diet and hygiene, suddenly tripped in his speech, for without warning a soft wavy cascade fell about the girl's shoulders. Through the glistening veil he could descry the droop of her lashes and the curve of her cheek. His tongue began to frame silent phrases about the tangles of Neæra's hair, and his heart beat foolishly. Of late he had become increasingly conscious of this weakness-nay, vice. Common decency seemed to forbid such sentiments towards an unprotected female. But "Thank you," ," said Miss Etherington frigidly, "I am glad you think I am putting on flesh; but you need not look at me like that. This is not Smithfield Market." Mr Gale's attack of sentimentality passed hastily. "Do you know," he said, "that we have been in this island for three months?" "Have we?" replied Miss Etherington. "It seems longer," she added untruthfully. "And I don't think," pursued Mr Gale, "that we have made the most of our opportunities." Miss Etherington scented danger, but could not forbear to inquire_ "In what way?" "Well," replied Mr Gale, "look at the things Robinson Crusoe did. He built boat-›› "We have a boat already," "There are no parrots on this island," replied Miss Etherington gently. "Quite true, but you haven't grasped the principle of what I am driving at. Here we are, living on a desert island, and so far we haven't done any thing that two people couldn't have accomplished by going for a picnic up the Thames. I even shave. We eat food out of tins; we do a little bathing and fishing in the morning, and play golf in the afternoon, and sit about in the evening and say how jolly it must be in Town just now. It seems to me that we are out of the picture somehow. We ought to be a little more primitive-barbaric. Do you follow me?" "No," said Miss Etherington. "In my opinion really nice people continue to behave just as nicely on a desert island as on a yacht." "But don't you think," continued Mr Gale perseveringly, "that we might train two goats to play bridge with us, or teach a turtle to sing, or something? Then we should feel that we were getting back to Nature-quite biblical, in fact. The voice of the turtle is heard in the land,' and so forth." "If you are going to talk nonsense," said Miss Etherington, "I think I will go and get dinner ready." "When we got away from here," continued the imaginative Mr Gale, "we could take the little troupe with us, and earn an honest living on the music-hall stage. I once saw some performing seals at the Palace. I should think performing turtles would get quite as big a salary; and then when the public got tired of them we could sell them to the Lord Mayor for soup. That is what is known in commercial circles. as a by-product." He ran on, and Miss Etherington watched him stealthily through her lashes. A man and woman, however antipathetic, cannot consort together upon an uninhabited island for three months without gaining some insight into one another's characters and motives. Miss Etherington knew the meaning of this performance. Mr Gale suspected her of low spirits, and was endeavouring to cheer her up. He was not doing it very well; but after all, good intentions count for something, and Miss Etherington felt grateful, despite herself. She continued to watch him furtively. He was a presentable youth. He sat beside her, healthy, cleancut, and bronzed, wearing a ragged flannel shirt and an old pair of duck trousers. His hands were clapsed about his knees; his eyes were fixed on vacancy; and his tongue wagged unceasingly. A harebrained and occasionally bumptious young man, but a man for all that. Suddenly Gale inquired— "I say, what do you think of me now? Has your opinion of me altered at all, after three self then. Do you forgive me? months of me neat?" You will, won't you?' The next moment he repented of his inquiry. He had firmly resolved never to embarrass the girl in this fashion so long as they remained on the island together. Now he had broken his word to himself. Miss Etherington's rippling mane had been a little too much for his fortitude. But the girl did not appear offended. She replied quite simply "Yes, I have. Ithink you have behaved very courageously in the face of all our difficulties-" "Self-preservation is the first- "" began Gale awkwardly. "And I have to thank you for a good deal as well," continued Miss Etherington, with slightly heightened colour. "Besides saving my life-you did, you know: that was your life-jacket I was wearing that morning-you have behaved very courteously and honourably to me ever since we found ourselves here, and I am grateful." Their eyes met. Mr Gale's suddenly blazed. "When you look at me and talk to me like that," he almost shouted, "I could Ahem! Ha! H'm! Quite so! My error!" Miss Etherington's cheeks were crimson. "I think I will take a sedative scramble up Point Garry," he concluded lamely. "Perhaps it would be as well," agreed Miss Etherington. "Don't be late for dinner." Mr Gale turned to go, and then paused. "You don't ask me," he remarked in a slightly injured voice, "whether my opinion of you has changed at all." "No," replied Miss Etherington. "There is no need." "I wonder what in thunder she meant by that," mused the harassed Mr Gale, as he scrambled up Point Garry. "Heaven help a man left alone on a desert island with a girl! And I actually thought it would make things easier! Flint axe, and all that. Why don't IHallo, hallo, hallo! Steady, my boy! Is wisions about?" He had reached the summit of the bluff. There, two miles to the northward, slipping gently over the rollers under easy sail, he beheld a ship-a three-masted schooner. For a castaway, hungering foi a re-entry into civilisation, Mr Gale's subsequent behaviour was peculiar. VI. He began by staring stockishly at the passing vehicle of deliverance, evidently the prey of conflicting impulses. |