ildren of
light. She was fair as the lily which has just unfolded its stainless
leaves to the kisses of the sun, with hair of a bright golden hue
clinging in damp curls around her slender form. Her eyes were of the
color of the cloudless summer heaven, and the pale lips were so
exquisitely cut that a sculptor might have been proud to copy them for
his _beau ideal_ of human loveliness. I gazed, and worshiped this
creature rescued by myself from the jaws of destruction. Hitherto I had
thought little of love. The specimens of the female sex in our rough
settlement were, as may be supposed, not of a very attractive
description. Coarse, uneducated, toil-worn women, and girls who promised
in a few years to emulate their mothers in homeliness, possessed no
charms for me. It is true, that in my occasional visits to the more
civilized portions of my country, I saw many of the beautiful and gently
nurtured, but they were placed so far above me that it would have seemed
as rational to become enamored of the fairest star in heaven, and think
to make it mine. But this lovely girl had been rescued by me; her life
had been my gift, and she seemed of right to belong to me. All, save
herself, had perished in the wreck; she was probably alone in the world,
and I hugged to my soul the hope that in me, her preserver, she would
find father, brother, lover, all united.

My thoughts were interrupted by the voice of my father, who had just
landed with a boat-load of bales and boxes.

"How is this, Erlon?" he thundered. "Have you again dared to save life,
and neglect the object of our expedition? Fool! you will yet be driven
forth as a drone from the hive. The girl's dead; throw her into the sea;
she will be a dainty morsel for the sharks."

The girl raised her head as he spoke, and cast a wild look around her.

"Father! oh, where is my father?" said she, in a piercing tone. "O God,
let me die!" and she clasped her hands over her eyes as if to shut out
the vision of the swarthy, reckless-looking men who pressed forward to
gaze upon her.

"Hear her prayer," said the old man, brutally; "in with her at once! We
want no witnesses against us of this night's work."

He stepped forward as if to put his threat in execution. She shivered,
and shrank beneath the covering I had placed around her. I arose, and
stepping between them, said,

"You must first throw me in; for, by the heaven above us, we both go
together! I have your own promise for all