ourse of
years, how many would explore the lagoon or woods? Perhaps not one.

Occasionally Dick would make an excursion in the dinghy to the old
place, but Emmeline refused to accompany him. He went chiefly to obtain
bananas; for on the whole island there was but one clump of banana
trees--that near the water source in the wood, where the old green
skulls had been discovered, and the little barrel.

She had never quite recovered from the occurrence on the reef.
Something had been shown to her, the purport of which she vaguely
understood, and it had filled her with horror and a terror of the place
where it had occurred. Dick was quite different. He had been frightened
enough at first; but the feeling wore away in time.

Dick had built three houses in succession during the five years. He had
laid out a patch of taro and another of sweet potatoes. He knew every
pool on the reef for two miles either way, and the forms of their
inhabitants; and though he did not know the names of the creatures to
be found there, he made a profound study of their habits.

He had seen some astonishing things during these five years--from a
fight between a whale and two thrashers conducted outside the reef,
lasting an hour, and dyeing the breaking waves with blood, to the
poisoning of the fish in the lagoon by fresh water, due to an
extraordinarily heavy rainy season.

He knew the woods of the back of the island by heart, and the forms of
life that inhabited them, butterflies and moths and birds, lizards, and
insects of strange shape; extraordinary orchids--some filthy-looking,
the very image of corruption, some beautiful, and all strange. He found
melons and guavas, and breadfruit, the red apple of Tahiti, and the
great Brazilian plum, taro in plenty, and a dozen other good
things--but there were no bananas. This made him unhappy at times, for
he was human.

Though Emmeline had asked Koko for Dick's whereabouts, it was only a
remark made by way of making conversation, for she could hear him in
the little cane-brake which lay close by amidst the trees.

In a few minutes he appeared, dragging after him two canes which he had
just cut, and wiping the perspiration off his brow with his naked arm.
He had an old pair of trousers on--part of the truck salved long ago
from the Shenandoah--nothing else, and he was well worth looking at and
considering, both from a physical and psychological point of view.

Auburn-haired and tall, looking more