e hide far down. None
frighten Clair-de-Lune; they frighten of him. He become the father
according to his best."

It was touching, I must say, to hear this old man's broken story; and
prettier still to see the affectionate eyes with which these little
girls watched every movement of one to whom, I am sure, they were
beholden for all that they got out of Ken's Island. For the rest, the
tale was plain enough. The father had been wrecked and drowned on the
sword-fish reef; the servant had saved the children and himself from
the ship, and his own natural cleverness had done the rest. No one
interfered with him, he said; and this was true. I verily believe that
the devils in the valley below believed that he and the children with
him were nothing more or less than spirits.

I say his story was plain, and yet there was something in it which was
Greek to me. He had named a house under the sea, and what that meant,
or how any man could build such a house, lay beyond my understanding. I
should have asked a question about it there and then, and have sought
light on the matter if it hadn't been that the food was already cooked,
and, the others being mighty anxious, we sat down to steaming coffee
and broiled kid's flesh and good bread and sweet fruit, and I was very
willing to keep my curiosity. Once, it is true, the young girl who
called herself "Rosamunda" came and sat by my side and wished to talk
to me; but, prettily as she spoke our tongue, her measure of it was
limited, and we did not get very far, in spite of good intentions.

"Do you like the island, do you like living here?" I asked her.

She answered me with a doubting shake of her pretty head.

"In the sun-months, yes, I like it; but not in the sleep-time. You will
go away before the sleep-time, monsieur?"

"Really, young lady," said I, "it seems to me that it depends upon
Mister Jacob and the ship. But, supposing I cannot go away--what then?
How does the sleep-time concern me?"

"You must not stay," she said, quickly; "for us it is different; we--we
live in the house under the sea, but no stranger may live there--the
Governor would not permit it. On the island all things sleep. If you do
not go to the house under the sea--ah, monsieur, but you will sail
away, you will sail in your ship."

She put it very childishly, the same cock-and-bull story that the old
Frenchman had been at last night. What to make of it, I knew no more
than the dead. Here we seemed to be