shade of the trees, in blissful oblivion of the passage of
time, waiting quite contentedly until Master Bob chose to rejoin us,
which he faithfully promised he would in time for dinner.

At length, however, the position of the sun in the western heavens
warned us that the hour named was long past, and I proposed a walk as
far as the head of the ravine, hoping to meet the truant returning. We
walked slowly, my strength not yet being sufficient to permit of very
active exertion, and by the time that we reached the point aimed at, the
entire landscape was flooded in the lovely pinky-purplish haze which
immediately precedes sunset. Still no Bob made his appearance, and I
began to grow seriously alarmed. We waited another half-hour, and then,
just as the sun was about to disappear in the purple western wave, and
we had made up our minds to return to the cutter, thinking he might
possibly have passed down the ravine on its opposite side, he made his
appearance.

To my surprise, he seemed singularly uncommunicative, and we could get
but little out of him beyond the fact that he had, with very great
difficulty, reached the summit, and found my conjecture as to its being
an extinct crater correct. He thawed a little during dinner, and
volunteered the information that he had seen land far away on the
southern board--nearly or quite a hundred miles distant, he supposed--
and had seen the loom of land to the westward, or about west-north-west,
and also to the northward. He was of opinion, he said, that our late
enemies had come from the land seen to the southward and were bound
north, touching at our island on their way, on some marauding excursion,
as he had been able completely to sweep the island in every direction
from the commanding elevation of the mountain-top, and had detected no
sign whatever of "niggers" in any direction. With this he dropped the
subject and adverted to my condition, questioning me solicitously--
unusually so, I fancied--as to how I felt, the extent of my strength,
where we had been, and what we had seen. He was particularly curious on
this latter point, and asked the same question so repeatedly that Ella
made some laughing remark, I forget what, upon it, and he carefully
avoided any further repetition of it for the remainder of the evening,
at least as long as Ella was with us.

When at length she retired to her own tent for the night, however, he
became more communicative. I was already undre