g looks to
Spinkie. "If you keep fidgitin' about you'll capsize de boat. You hear?"

Spinkie veiled his real affection for the negro under a look of supreme
indifference, while Winnie went off into a sudden giggle at the idea of
such a small creature capsizing the boat.

Mindful of his father's warning, Nigel did his best to "haul off" and to
prevent his "figurehead" from going "by the board." But he found it
uncommonly hard work, for Winnie looked so innocent, so pretty, so
unconscious, so sympathetic with everybody and everything, so very
young, yet so wondrously wise and womanly, that he felt an irresistible
desire to prostrate himself at her feet in abject slavery.

"Dear little thing," said Winnie, putting her hand on Spinkie's little
head and smoothing him down from eyes to tail.

Spinkie looked as if half inclined to withdraw his allegiance from Moses
and bestow it on Winnie, but evidently changed his mind after a moment's
reflection.

"O that I were a monkey!" thought Nigel, paraphrasing Shakespeare, "that
I might----" but it is not fair to our hero to reveal him in his
weaker moments!

There was something exasperating, too, in being obliged, owing to the
size of the boat, to sit so close to Winnie without having a right to
touch her hand! Who has not experienced this, and felt himself to be a
very hero of self-denial in the circumstances?

"Mos' awrful hot!" remarked Moses, wiping his forehead with the sleeve
of his shirt.

"_You_ hot!" said Nigel in surprise. "I thought nothing on earth could
be too hot for you."

"Dat's your ignerance," returned Moses calmly. "Us niggers, you see,
ought to suffer more fro' heat dan you whites."

"How so?"

"Why, don't your flossiphers say dat black am better dan white for
'tractin' heat, an' ain't our skins black? I wish we'd bin' born white
as chalk. I say, Massa Nadgel, seems to me dat dere's not much left ob
Krakatoa."

They had approached near enough to the island by that time to perceive
that wonderful changes had indeed taken place, and Van der Kemp, who had
been for some time silently absorbed in contemplation, at last turned to
his daughter and said--

"I had feared at first, Winnie, that my old home had been blown entirely
away, but I see now that the Peak of Rakata still stands, so perhaps I
may yet show you the cave in which I have spent so many years."

"But why did you go to live in such a strange place, dear father?" asked
the girl, laying her