se curled, in
company with his lip, and he threw the fruit down.

"Pah! it's a bad one," he exclaimed.

"Bad! you young ignoramus!" cried the major, taking up the fallen fruit,
and beginning to pick out its seeds and custardy interior with his
knife. "You have no taste."

"But it smells so horrible!" cried Mark.

"Bah! Don't think about the smell. Taste it."

He opened another, and handed it to Mark, who, seeing that his father
was eating one, proceeded cautiously to taste the evil-smelling object,
and found in it so peculiarly grateful a flavour that he tried it again
and again, and before he knew what he was about he had finished it.

"Try another, Mark," said the major. "I learned to eat these at
Singapore, where they cultivate them, and they are twice as big, often
three times."

Mark took another, and sniffed at it, to find when he had done that
Billy Widgeon had been looking on with an air of the most profound
contempt.

"Haven't you had one, Billy?" said Mark eagerly.

"Haven't I had one, Mr Mark, sir! No, I haven't; and how people of
eddication can go and eat such things as them is more'n I can make out."

"You try one," said Mark. "They're lovely."

"Too lovely for me, Mr Mark, sir. I'm going to have a chew of
tobacco!"

Mark was so highly pleased with his experiment that he turned to Small,
who was seated staring straight before him and listening.

"Try one of these, Mr Small," he said.

Small took the fruit, smelt it, and then jerked it away.

"Don't you try to play larks on them as is older than yourself, young
gentleman," he said so sourly that Mark walked away discomfited, and the
boatswain went on listening till the sound he had heard increased in
violence, and he found that everyone was on the _qui vive_.

"It comes from over the other side of that rocky patch of hill," said
the major, pointing. "It's a waterfall, and we did not hear it before
on account of the wind."

But if it was a waterfall, and that it sounded to be, it ceased flowing
as rapidly and suddenly as it had begun, for once more all was still in
that direction, and they sat resting and gazing with mingled feelings of
awe and delight at the glorious landscape of black and brown rock and
wondrous ferny growth rising before them from beyond a little valley at
their feet right up to the summit of the mountain, about whose top the
little cloud of smoke or vapour still hung.

It was a never-to-be-forgotten scene of