nd. But as soon as
we had pretty well seen all that there was to be seen, we thought that,
the time still being fair, we could scarcely do better than get our
fellow-adventurers over. Our men were therefore set to work collecting
as large a quantity of fuel as might be, and in clearing a path to the
summit of the nearest hill, from which we might set off our bonfire to
the best advantage.

Our men were all dispersed about the island busy at this business, and
Marjorie was in her tent, taking at her brother's entreaty the rest she
would never have allowed herself. It was a very hot day, and Lancelot
and I, who had been collecting firewood on the near slope of the hill,
but a few yards from the creek where our craft was beached, were lying
down for a brief rest under a tree and talking together of old times.
The sight of a small gaudy parrot, of which there was an abundance in
the island, had sent our memories back to that parlour of Mr. Davies's
where we had first met, and where there were parrots on the wall, and so
we chatted very pleasantly.

By-and-by our talk flagged a little, for we grew drowsy with the heat,
and our eyes closed and we fell into dozes, from which we would lazily
wake up to enjoy the warm air and the bright sunlight and the vivid
colours of everything about us, sea and sky and trees and flowers and
grasses.

I remember very well musing as I lay there upon the strangeness of
disposition which leads men to pine out their lives in the mean air of
smoky cities, with all their hardship and their unloveliness, when the
world has so many brave places only waiting for bold spirits to come and
dwell therein. Boylike, I had forgotten all the perils which I had
undergone before ever I came to Fair Island. I was only conscious of the
delicious appearance of the place, of our good fortune in finding so
fair a haven; and if only Captain Marmaduke and my mother had been with
us I think I could have been very well content to pass the remainder of
my days upon that island, which seemed to me to the full as enchanted as
any I had read of in the Arabian tales.

I had dropped into a kind of sleep, in which I dreamt that I was Sindbad
the Sailor, when I was awakened by a light step and the sound of a soft
voice. I looked up and saw that Marjorie was bending over Lancelot, who
was sitting up by me. She held him by the arm and pointed out across the
sea.

'Don't you see something out there?' she asked, speaking quit