the box of books?" she asked.

"Yes, but not in the cave. They are at the foot of the cinchona over
there. Why? Do you want any?"

"I have a Bible in my room, but there was a Tennyson among the others
which I glanced at in spare moments."

The sailor thanked the darkness that concealed the deep bronze of face
and neck caused by this chance remark. He vaguely recollected the
manner in which the lines from "Maud" came to his lips after the
episode of the letter. Was it possible that he had unknowingly uttered
them aloud and Iris was now slily poking fun at him? He glowed with
embarrassment.

"It is odd that you should mention Tennyson," he managed to say calmly.
"Only today I was thinking of a favorite passage."

Iris, of course, was quite innocent this time.

"Oh, do tell me. Was it from 'Enoch Arden'?"

He gave a sigh of relief. "No. Anything but that," he answered.

"What then?"

"'Maud.'"

"Oh, 'Maud.' It is very beautiful, but I could never imagine why the
poet gave such a sad ending to an idyllic love story."

"They too often end that way. Moreover, 'Enoch Arden' is not what you
might call exhilarating."

"No. It is sad. I have often thought he had the 'Sonata Pathetique' in
his mind when he wrote it. But the note is mournful all through. There
is no promise of happiness as in 'Maud.'"

"Then it is my turn to ask questions. Why did you hit upon that poem
among so many?"

"Because it contains an exact description of our position here. Don't
you remember how the poor fellow

"'Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,
A shipwrecked sailor, waiting for a sail.'

"I am sure Tennyson saw our island with poetic eye, for he goes on--

"'No sail from day to day, but every day
The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
Among the palms and ferns and precipices;
The blaze upon the waters to the east;
The blaze upon his island overhead;
The blaze upon the waters to the west;
Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven,
The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again
The scarlet shafts of sunrise--but no sail."

She declaimed the melodious verse with a subtle skill that amazed her
hearer. Profoundly moved, Jenks dared not trust himself to speak.

"I read the whole poem the other day," she said after a silence of some
minutes. "Sorrowful as it is, it comforted me by comparison. How
different will be our fate to his when 'another ship stays by this
isle'!"

Yet neither of the