ff. But I shall be glad when he'll let me come on deck. Might do a
bit o' fishing, sir."

"You shall, Ned, as soon as you can."

There were no signs of the savages' visit when they passed inside the
lagoon again, and, in the hope that they might remain now unmolested,
the yacht steamed right away from the entrance and cast anchor nearly on
the opposite side of the island, where the lagoon was at its widest, so
as to give ample room for manoeuvring in case of attack, where the shore
was more beautiful than in any part they had yet seen.

One of the tiny rivers ran down a precipitous gully in a series of
fern-hung falls, to lose itself in the golden sands, and close at hand
the sheltering trees were of the grandest in size and loveliness,
overhung as they were with festoons of flowers, each tree affording
ample study for Sir John and his friend; and the collecting went on
apace from morn to eve, so that the boxes they had brought began to fill
up and smell strongly of the aromatic gums and spices used to keep ants
at a distance.

The sailors took the keenest delight in the birds, and were eager to
learn to skin, and carefully laid them in the hot sunshine till they
dried. They gloried too in the pickle-tub, as they called the
spirit-cask, to which the abundant snakes and lizards were consigned.
Then of an evening they were always waiting for Jack to give the word
for fishing, partly as an interesting sport, but after the first few
times, for the sake of what Lenny called the pot, though in almost every
case the capture was fried.

It needed a good deal of care and discrimination though, and the
doctor's natural history knowledge was often called upon to decide
whether some gorgeously-armoured creature would be wholesome or no, some
of the tropic fish being poisonous in the extreme.

Then in addition there were the handsome birds which were collected;
these, especially the fruit-pigeons, being very toothsome, though the
larger parrots and cockatoos were, as Wrensler the cook said, not to be
sneezed at, though he declared that they would have been far better if
plucked instead of skinned.

So beautiful was the shore by the stream that the temptation was very
great to erect a tent and live on the land, but it was considered too
risky.

"Only fancy, Jack," said the doctor with a queer look, "our meeting with
the same trouble out in this solitary island as we should in London."

"What trouble?" said Jack, laughin