e low, as
she always did when excited by anything.

Lancelot and I followed the direction of her gaze and her outstretched
finger, and discerned very far away upon the sea a small black object.
It lay between us and the island we had left, but somewhat to the right
of it.

'What is it?' I asked.

'That's just what I want to know,' said Marjorie. 'How if it should be
savages?'

The very thought was disquieting. We had grown so secure that we had
almost forgotten the possibility of such dangers; but now, at Marjorie's
words, the possibilities came clearly back to me. Captain Marmaduke had
told us many a time stories about savages and their war canoes and
their barbarous weapons, and it was very likely indeed that what we saw
was a boat filled with such creatures creeping across the sea to attack
us.

It moved very slowly across the smooth waters, and there was a strong
bright sun, which played upon the surface of the water very dazzlingly,
which added to our difficulty in understanding the floating object. But
as it came slowly nearer we saw that it must be some kind of vessel, for
we distinguished what was clearly a mast with a sail, though, as there
was very little wind that morning, the sail hung idly by the mast. A
little later we were able to be sure that what we saw was a kind of
raft, with, as I have said, a mast and sail, but that its propulsion
came from some human beings who were aboard it, and who were causing its
slow progress with oars. By this time I had got out a spy-glass from our
tent; and then Lancelot gave a cry of amazement, for he recognised in
the new-comers certain of those colonists our companions whom we had
left behind on the hither island. There were five of them on board, all
of whom Lancelot named to us, and as he named them, Marjorie and I,
looking through the glass in turns, were able to recognise them too.
By-and-by they saw us too, for one of them stood up on the raft, and
stripping off his shirt waved it feebly in the air as a signal to us, a
signal which we immediately answered by waving our kerchiefs. It takes a
long time to tell, but the thing itself took longer to happen, for it
must have been fully an hour after we first noted the raft before it
came close to the shore of our island.

As soon as it was within a couple of boats' lengths Lancelot and I, in
our impatience and our anxiety to aid, ran into the water, which was
shallow there, for the beach sloped gently, and was no